


Redshift

by lifeofsnark



Category: Avengers: Endgame - Fandom, Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Anal Sex, And not even death can take that from me, Black Widow: Most Loyal Avenger, F/M, I am the Black Widow, I have some to share, James and Natasha fall in love during her time, M/M, Multi, Natasha gets a funeral, Natasha lives and has a relationship with Steve and Bucky, Natasha sees Tony in the Stone, Natasha's heaven is with her family, Oh Natasha is involved with the Space Race, Oral Sex, Peter sees Natasha when the women surround him, Red Room is its own warning, Smut, Steve Doesn't Nope The Fuck Out, Steve and Natasha fall in love after Civil War, This is Endgame compliant, While also being a fix it fic, You want feelings?, p in v, with the Red Room and KBG
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-02-26 18:52:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 48,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18722920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeofsnark/pseuds/lifeofsnark
Summary: If there’s anything that Steve can cling to, it’s this: the universe isn’t one thing, set and immutable. They live in a multiverse; they live at an ever-moving nexus ofnow, when anything and everything can splinter into a million different could haves, should haves, would haves.And if it can have happened, that means that somewhere it did happen.Somewhere there is a universe where Natasha didn’t die.Somewhere there is a world where Steve and Clint aren’t the only ones to cry for her.Somewhere there is a world where they had more time.~~~OR: The multiverse fic.Natasha gets a funeral in this world, but in every other she finds her family, and home, and peace. This story is Endgame compliant whilealsorewriting what happened, because somewhere in an infinite set of universes,Natasha Romanov gets her happily ever after.





	1. could haves, should haves, would haves

If there’s anything that Steve can cling to, it’s this: the universe isn’t one thing, set and immutable. They live in a multiverse; they live at an ever-moving nexus of _now,_ when anything and everything can splinter into a million different _could haves, should haves, would haves._

 

And if it _can_ have happened, that means that somewhere it _did_ happen.

 

Somewhere there is a universe where Natasha didn’t die.

 

Somewhere there is a world where Steve and Clint aren’t the only ones to cry for her.

 

(Surely Tony had known that they were the only family she had. Surely he hadn’t forgotten the Red Room; her deprogramming, her admission of monsterhood?)

 

Somewhere there is a world where they had more time.

 

* * *

 

_Once upon a time, they’d had this:_

 

The quinjet seemed strangely hollow after dropping Wanda and Vision in Scotland.

 

They settled in the pilots’ seats, and through the windscreen the stars shone above; an endless vista of light-studded night. Outside crickets chirped, and for a moment, for the thinnest skin of a second, all was right with the world.

 

It was Natasha who eventually broke the silence. “Where to?” she asked, running the tips of her fingers over the joystick.

 

“I…”

 

He hadn’t thought that far ahead. His goal had been to get everyone off the Raft, and then home, and- he didn’t know what he would do. He’d fought for Bucky, and Bucky was frozen in Wakanda as Shuri and her scientists tried to clear the traps out of his brain.

 

“Don’t tell me the man with a plan… has no ideas,” said Natasha. She wasn’t smiling, but something about her sideways glance hinted at a smirk.

 

Steve shrugged. “We’re fugitives. Not sure where we go.” _And I don’t have my shield. Even in the ice I had the shield._

 

Natasha started flipping controls, her fingers dancing easily through their pre-flight check. “Well,” she said. “You know how you told me once I might be in the wrong business?”

 

“Yeah?” asked Steve as the verdant green of the Scottish cliffs began to fall away beneath them. (He’d always remember that day. He’d seen her unguarded. He’d seen through the _truth isn’t all things to all people._ )

 

“I’m not. In the wrong business, that is. Staying off the radar, staying on the move- I’ve been training for this my whole life, Cap.”

 

“And what are we going to do?” asked Steve,  more bemused than worried. “I get a job somewhere working a register? You get a secretary job and make some guy’s wife real worried?”

 

She didn’t visibly react, but then again- she rarely did. (And when Natasha reacted to something, it was deliberate. Every single time.)

 

“Is that so hard to believe? I’m a great secretary. And PA. And contracting officer.”

 

“Yeah?” Come to think of it, there wasn’t much Natasha couldn’t do. “I actually did work a register. It was one of the big old ones we had in the thirties. Manual spring in the till that got stuck on cold mornings, and a bell that chimed when it opened.”

 

Natasha set the controls on auto and slumped back into her seat, propping one heel up on the dash. At some point, it had stopped making Steve nervous when she did that.

 

“Was this before the war?”

 

“Yeah,” said Steve. Chronologically it had been something like a decade for him; ten years since he’d seen Ma Barnes and Becca and the Barnes Grocery in east Brooklyn.

 

“I… I was sick a lot, and my mam had died. Money was tight, and a lot of places wouldn’t take me on. Bucky’s family had a grocery store, and they let me work it. It should have been Bucky’s, but he got a job fitting ships down at the docks. We did okay.”

 

“And then he got drafted,” said Natasha quietly.

 

_And then he’d been drafted, and the rest- the rest was in the history books._ “Yes.”

 

Natasha nodded slowly. “And then Hydra took him.”

 

Steve could feel his nostrils flaring as he sucked in a deep breath, but he managed to nod. Bucky was sitting in a cryopod in Wakanda because of them; they were fugitives from the United Nations because of Hydra, they-

 

“That’s the plan, Rogers,” said Natasha, cutting through Steve’s spiraling, brooding thoughts. “We’ve got time on our hands, and we’ve got what some people might call non-transferable skills. I say we use the information we’ve got, and take them apart.”

 

“You warned me about pulling those threads,” said Steve, watching Natasha’s foot bob to an internal beat. “This what you were worried about me finding?” The stars were still sliding by above them, and in the dark everything below blurred by, unseen.

 

“In part,” said Natasha.

 

They wouldn’t have backup. The didn’t have verified intelligence, and Steve didn’t have his shield. He didn’t have a country backing him up, and this time he was firmly outside the law. They’d be killing people, because despite Natasha’s ledger and his own morals, Bucky had been right:

 

It always ended in a fight.

 

“Let’s get started,” he told Natasha.

 

* * *

 

_Once, it had started in Istanbul, in a shabby apartment with a red roof that had smelled of street trash and the sea._

 

Steve could feel Natasha watching him from the bed. “We shouldn’t have done that,” he said, feeling his shoulder blades digging into the wall behind him. This place- a safe house belonging to one of Natasha’s missing and mysterious contacts- consisted of a small kitchenette, a steel-reinforced door, a bathroom, and a mattress on the floor.

 

And Natasha was on it.

 

Natasha shrugged. She could shrug like no one else he knew: depending on the height of her shoulder or the tilt of her head a shrug could mean anything or nothing. Steve chose to interpret this one as, “No use crying over communication facilities that have already been burned to the ground.”

 

“I couldn’t wipe it fast enough, and besides- they can’t know we’re onto them. Not yet. The fire seemed like a safe bet.”

 

“A safe bet? You got yourself blown up ‘making it look like an accident’.” And he’d been off-balance and caught up in his own head without his shield. It was a bad soldier that couldn’t adapt, and he was feeling like damn bad soldier.

 

“Only a little,” said Natasha, shifting the ice-pack higher on her ribs. “If I hadn’t hit that shelf it would have been fine.”

 

Steve took a deep breath and decided that he’d have to let that angle go. He’d fought in the second world war, and he’d felt better about _those_ odds than he did about winning this argument with Nat.

 

“The cell in Ukraine- did they tip off this one?”

 

“Not from what I could see,” said Nat, sliding down further onto the bed with a fleeting grimace.  “I have what I was able to download; I’ll go through it in the morning.”

 

“We could stay here a couple days,” said Steve, pushing himself off the floor and crossing the room to the small refrigerator. Inside the freezer was a bottle of raki and a stack of reusable ice packs. He took one off the top and returned to the queen-sized mattress, kneeling beside Natasha as he slid the now-melted ice-pack off her side and replaced it with the fresh one.

 

Before he could pull away Natasha’s hand was over his. Surprised, Steve flicked his eyes up to her face.

 

“Stay in the bed tonight,” she said.

 

“I- but-”

 

She smiled at him, but something in her eyes went soft and sad. For a second Steve wondered how many men had _assumed_ they could sleep in Black Widow’s bed.

 

“You’ve been very noble,” she said. “And I appreciate it. But we’ve been on the road for three weeks, and you can’t keep trying to force yourself onto couches. It’s only going to get worse, Steve, and besides- there’s no couch tonight.”

 

“I spent most of the war on the ground,” said Steve, a knee-jerk reaction.

 

“But you don’t have to,” said Natasha, her fingers still firm over his, and for a second the stirring of the open curtains and the smell and Nat’s words all blurred together. For a second he was back in Brooklyn, and back in the body he’d been born with, and it was Bucky telling him those words. _You don’t have to._

 

“You sure?” asked Steve, voice hoarse.

 

“I’m sure,” said Natasha, and the sad smile quirked over her features comet-quick.

 

Steve tossed the melted ice-pack in the freezer, half-aware of Natasha slowly shuffling out of her pants and under the thin sheet . He brushed his teeth quickly, cut the light on the way to bed, and carefully felt for the edge of the mattress with his toes.

 

Natasha was curled on her good side, her back to him, and through the half-light of the open window he could admire the way her hair curled on the pillow, heartsblood dark in the second-hand light of the city outside.

 

There was plenty of space between them, and hell- Steve had spent plenty of nights sharing his space with someone else. He and Buck had shared a bed most winters, especially after his mam died. During the war- at least during the winter, which had been when Steve was the most active on the ground- he and the men had slept all huddled together, trying to conserve whatever heat they’d been able to generate.

 

He wasn’t a stranger to this- that Shakespeare play had said misery makes strange bedfellows, and in the trenches, that had been true.  

 

But this was Natasha. And this was definitely not a misery.

 

“You know,” she said, her voice subdued, but not quite a whisper. “I always slept better like this.”

 

“With the windows open?” Steve always had. In the summer it had been easier for him to breathe.

 

“With someone else in the bed with me,” said Natasha.

 

Suddenly Steve was terribly aware of his heartbeat, of its steady thumping in his ears.

 

“I mean- a friend,” said Natasha. “Not just someone.”

 

Of course. That was obvious.

 

“But it’s nice. It’s nice to have someone watching my back. Thanks, Rogers.”

 

Steve knew he could let it rest; that he could let the conversation drop. He watched as her profile shifted, as her right hand slid the ice pack lower on her left side. It couldn’t be comfortable sleeping like that, with her right shoulder rolled under her to hold the ice.

 

Steve inched forward and pulled the sheet up over the ice pack and then rested his palm on top, holding the cold little square in place.

 

“Thanks,” she repeated, letting her arm slide down and her torso ever so slightly uncurl.

 

“I understand that,” said Steve eventually, his voice low and a little raspy. “I’m the same way. I had- jesus, I had the worst asthma as a kid. Every winter it’d get cold, and we’d all start wondering if I’d see the spring. Bucky used to stay over when mam was working night shifts, and after she died he pretty much moved in. It’s good. Nice knowing someone else is there.”

 

He wondered if she’d reply. He wondered if she was asleep. Her breaths were still coming slow and even, and under his hand her side gently rose and fell.

 

“In the Red Room- they put us in dormitories. It started off with two girls to a bed, and as we- as we moved through the system, eventually there were enough beds for us to have our own. I didn’t sleep as well, then.”

 

“Couldn’t you have chosen to share?” asked Steve, holding himself as still as he could. In all their years together- two years as coworkers, and three as partners at SHIELD- she’d never talked about where she’d come from. Not like this. He was afraid any wrong move would remind her and make her stop talking.

 

“No,” said Natasha eventually. “No, we were- they made sure we stayed in our beds.”

 

There were too many ways they could have done that, and Steve wanted to imagine none of them.

 

“I’m glad you’re here, now,” he said eventually.

 

“Me too, Steve,” she said, a soft voice in the dark. “Me too.”

 

* * *

 

_Somewhere, long ago, there was a little red-headed girl who wasn’t quite as alone as Steve feared._

 

Today was Natalia’s test to move into the final stage of her training. She’d passed French, German, Japanese, Polish, and Farsi. She’d excelled _en pointe,_ and had correctly identified twelve poisons. Last week she’d killed a man on her first solo mission.

 

Natalia was fifteen. Her final tests lay with the Soldier. The first should be easy: to hold a conversation with him in American English. The second… would be interesting. The second was survival.

 

He was seated in a wooden chair at the front of one of their indoor classrooms; one of the ones with a boiler and heat. He was as still as only the Soldier could be.

 

“Romanova,” he said, gesturing to the simple chair a few feet in front of him.

 

“Comrade,” she said, taking the seat.

 

“You understand your task?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“You are to pass as a good American girl,” he said. He’d always been thorough. She’d appreciated that about his teaching style.

 

“There are no good American girls,” she said, looking at him through her lashes. With Madame, Natalia would have been slapped. With Instructor Petrovich, Natalia would have been ignored.

 

The Soldier (the _American_ ) laughed, little wrinkles forming at the corner of his eyes.

 

“You’re right,” he said. “You must pass as a bad American girl.”

 

“Of course,” said Natalia, crossing her legs primly. “Hasn’t the weather been lovely?”

 

The Soldier didn’t glance at the high windows. They’d been covered by snowdrifts months ago, and wouldn’t be clear again until spring. “Indeed,” he said simply, leaving the rest of the conversation up to her.

 

Natalia had planned this. Not the actual conversation, because she couldn’t sound rehearsed, but she’d thought very carefully about the topic.

 

“I’ve been reading recently,” she said. “Catching up, you understand. I just finished _Brave New World._ Have you read it?”

 

Something… flickered across the Soldier’s face, moving like a fish just under the surface of the water: a glint of light, and then it was lost into the depths again. “Yes,” he said.

 

“So many people find the topic alarming. They fear that it’s the future, I suppose. To have their lives decided for them, to have their jobs fated, their sleep filled with… subtle education.”

 

His face twitched again, emotion flashing in those ice-pale eyes. It was as close to a confirmation of her suspicions as she would get. Natalia continued, “I wasn’t frightened by the book the way the author intended me to be.”

 

“Why?” asked the American. He still hadn’t moved. Natalia wondered what the other seven girls had talked to him about.

 

“Because… it was comforting.”

 

His head cocked to the side, the barest suggestion of a shrug. “Having a purpose and a job and place should be comforting.”

 

“Hmm,” said Natalia, drumming her fingers on her knee. “That’s ...something, but not quite it. It was the reaction to the _soma._ Seeing all those people dulled and content, looking no further than their own interests. I know how that feels. Like everyone is wandering around with their eyes half-shut.”

 

“And yours?” asked the Soldier.

 

“Wide open,” she told him.

 

* * *

 

_A year later it was the Soldier who taught Natalia to stitch up her skin_.

 

Natalia lay flat on the cold cement floor of the grey windowless room and tried to keep her teeth from chattering. The cold was a blessing. The cold would slow her heartbeat and the rush of blood to her extremities. She may not die at all because of the cold.

 

Under her palm her blood seeped, hot and insistent, rolling down her belly and sides slowly, in heavy, languorous drops. Natalia had her shirt pressed hard to the wound, and she thought the blood might have slowed. As much as she was capable of hoping, she hoped it had.

 

A key tumbled in the lock of her door, but Natalia didn’t raise her head. She would survive this. She would survive to prove them wrong. _About what?_ she asked herself before focusing on the door again.

 

Quiet boots padded into the room, and from the corner of her eye Natalia saw hands set down a porcelain bowl filled with supplies. The hands were two-toned: one flesh, one metal.

 

“Instructor,” she said, so proud that her voice didn’t tremble.

 

“Romanova,” he said, and she watched the legs fold until the Soldier was sitting cross-legged beside her.

 

“Are you here to kill me?”

 

“Not tonight,” he said.

 

“Then what?” She had to bite her lip to stop her teeth from chattering now.

 

“I am here to tell you how to stitch your wound.”

 

“You will be interfering with the punishment of a candidate, Comrade.” It was the last protest she would make. Natalia Romanova, thirty-second of the Red Room candidates, wanted to live.

 

“Yes,” he said again.

 

His clothes rustled and in the near-oppressive silence of the detention room she could hear the soft whir of his arm as he set out the supplies that had been contained in the bowl.

 

“You should not have cut Katerina,” he said, tearing open a paper packet.

 

“I know,” said Natalia, swallowing a whimper as she pushed herself into a sitting position.  “But she was told not to use a weapon during our match.”

 

“She only brought one,” said the soldier. “You used it.”

 

“And then she did,” Natalia muttered. She’d blame her backtalk on blood loss.

 

The Soldier had supplies lined up neatly on a towel, and Natalia watched carefully as he pointed to each thing. “This is the suture needle. There, the silk. This is a salt water solution, which should be used to rinse the wound. Alcohol, suture pliers, bandages.”

 

Natalia nodded.

 

“Flush the wound with the saline,” said the Soldier.

 

She did, peeling the bloody wad of her shirt away. The wound was bleeding sluggishly, likely having scabbed on to the makeshift bandage. When she poured the saltwater over it, it _burned,_ and Natalia’s breath hissed out through her teeth.

 

“Again.”

 

She flushed the wound again, and then she was sitting in a rust-colored pool on a cold cement floor. He told her to dab at the edge of the gash with alcohol, which made her fingers shake even more, and by the time she picked up the needle she was _ready_ to stab it into her flesh.

 

“The point goes flat on your skin, straight up and down,” said the Soldier, his expression still neutral. “You twist it through with that tool.”

 

“I trust you. Your hand.” It was clear that she meant she’d trust him to give her the stitches himself.

 

“I- I cannot.”

 

“Will not.”

 

“I cannot touch the recruits. Not outside sparring. I … _cannot.”_

 

_Ah._ How strange that of all the teachers, all the men who had come and gone as test proctors and marks, _this_ was the one on whom they’d placed limits.

 

“The point. Straight up and down,” he repeated.

 

Natalia did as instructed; forcing the needle up through her skin like a once-silver fish breaching the surface of a sanguine sea. She was sweating, and her lips trembled.

 

He talked her through thirteen clumsy stitches. The wound wasn’t bleeding, and she wasn’t cold anymore.

 

“Why?” she asked as he dropped the instruments back in the bowl.

 

“Because I bet on you to graduate first. Petrovich chose Katerina. This… evens the odds.

 

“It’s cheating,” she mumbled, closing her eyes. She’d rest them for a minute.

 

“Just like Katerina,” he said, standing and moving to the door.

 

She fell asleep. When Natalia woke it was to Madame Babakova standing over her, glaring at the crusted blood beneath Natalia’s stitched belly.

 

“Who helped you?” she asked.

 

“No one,” said Natalia, lying to Madame for the first time in… years.

 

The slap was quick and expected. “Who helped you?”

 

“No one.”

 

Another slap, and Natalia’s lip split.

 

“Not many have access to the keys,” said Madame. “We will know. Tell me, and we will let them live.”

 

“I picked the lock,” said Natalia.

 

Another hit, and she was slower to push herself upright again, sluggish with sleep and pain and cold.

 

“I helped her,” said an even baritone voice from the door. Madame’s eyebrows rose nearly to her neat blonde hairline.

 

“Soldier,” she said. “You are not permitted to interfere with the punishment of a candidate.”

 

“I did not stitch her,” he said. “Merely brought her the supplies the way Petrovich's candidate brought her own to the fight.”

 

Madame’s lips thinned. “Romanova, dance begins in a quarter hour. Clean yourself and find your shoes.”

 

“Yes, Madame,” said Natalia, pushing herself to her feet and hurrying out the door. She was careful not to touch the Soldier.

 

Ballet was excruciating, as it always was, and Natalia was thirsty and dizzy by the time the dance master dismissed them.

 

“Romanova,” called Madame from the back as the other girls left to change. “Come with me.”

 

Natalia looped her pointe shoes around her neck and slid her feet into the flat shoes the girls were issued to wear to meals and indoor, academic classes. “Ready, Madame,” she told Babakova.

 

She tailed the instructor down through the levels of the school, out into the snow, and to a low stone building that was used to house vehicles and garden equipment. Now, as they stepped inside, Natalia could see that it also housed a complex, reinforced metal chair.

 

In the chair sat the Soldier, stripped to the waist. His left arm ended at the elbow, where jagged scar tissue met shining metal plates.

 

“Watch,” said Madame, leading Natalia to the section of wall directly across from the chair. “And make no noise.”

 

Petrovich was the next to come into the building, accompanied by a short German man Natalia didn’t know. “His programming held,” he said, gesturing with his hands. “It is functional, and should not be tampered with.”

 

“He _interfered,”_ said Petrovich.

 

Natalia wanted to ask if he was only angry about the bet. Katerina would _not_ be the woman to graduate as the First of the Red Room. That bloody honor would be Natalia’s. It would be hers, and she would be the First as no one else ever had.

 

“But-”

 

“ _Fix it,”_ Petrovich hissed.

 

The Soldier had been watching this exchange calmly, pale eyes flicking from one man to another. Natalia wasn’t sure what was happening, but she knew that if it was happening to her, she’d be fighting. She’d fight until they stopped her.

 

“Soldier, I understand you have been… non-compliant,” said the German man.

 

“I followed the parameters of my mission,” said the Soldier.

 

“There have been complaints,” said the scientist, tapping at a keypad on the side of the chair. “Open.”

 

The hair on the back of Natalia’s neck rose as the Soldier opened his mouth and accepted a heavy rubber guard.

 

“Lie back.” He did that too, and heavy metal bands clamped around his arms and torso. Metal probes were placed around his head, a level was switched and-

 

Natalia had heard men die before. She’d done the killing, had witnessed firsthand the torturing. She’d thought she’d heard all the noises the human throat could make.

 

She’d been wrong.

 

So she watched, dry-eyed, as the Soldier _screamed,_ air hissing past the bite guard, his spine as bowed and stiff as the restraints would allow.

 

When he went boneless and still, the lever was switched again, and the probes were removed.

 

Still, Natalia watched, gooseflesh prickling up and down her arms. This was unnatural in a way that death could never be.

 

Eventually the soldier roused and blinked his eyes open. They were only half-focused.

 

Quietly the German rattled off a handful a nonsense words, several of which Natasha missed.

 

When the next words fell from the Soldier’s lips, Natalia vowed that she would never sit in that chair. The Soldier, when he spoke, said: “Ready to comply.”

 

He was taken somewhere after that day. Natalia didn’t see the Soldier again for three years. Before, she’d wanted to graduate First out of pride. She was Natalia Romanova, and she was the best, and she dreamed of impossible feats.

 

Now, after seeing what punishment truly could be, she _excelled._ She would do anything to stay out of that chair.  

 

Natalia’s rise was meteoric: burning, brilliant, and unstoppable.

 

* * *

 

_There are few things Steve is sure of in this world. One of them is this:_ Natasha will be there for him. _Natasha will be there for her team until there is no team, no there, or no Natasha._

 

Steve’s head was ringing, pealing like mourning bells over a bloody French field, vibrating like a star-emblazoned shield dropped on a concrete floor in Siberia. He missed his shield, and sometimes, in his nightmares, Steve could still hear it ringing as he walked away again.

 

(Maybe he _didn’t_ deserve that shield. That shield was for Captain America, and Captain America served the greater good. He was the Captain for all. And that was the problem: Steve Rogers had never been all that worried about the greater good. For Steve it had always been about a few.)

 

His head ached and the room spun and jesus, it felt like his intestines were trying to get a look at the outside world.

 

“Rogers!”

 

Her voice echoed over the gunfire and chaos. “I’m coming for you Rogers, don’t you die on me now.”

 

He didn’t say anything back. He lay there, bleeding and breathing and keeping the faith. Not faith in the narrative justice of universe or any all-knowing god. Steve had faith in something much more immediate, and a hell of a lot scarier: he had a trust in Natasha Romanov that bordered on reverence, and if that wasn’t faith, what was?

 

“Didn’t think things would be this busy,” she called as someone gurgled, their scream cut off.

 

He knew that. They’d both assumed this cell had been abandoned a long time ago. _Christ,_ he thought to himself. _Just might die in Germany after all._

 

Someone was up on the catwalk with him now, their footsteps making the metal under Steve’s back hum. Two shots rang out (handgun, medium caliber) and the footsteps stopped.

 

The sounds drifting up from below switched to grunts and curses: the thudding rhythm of hand-to-hand combat. Steve wasn’t sure how many Hydra soldiers were left, but if it was less than say, twelve, Natasha had this in the bag.

 

“You still up there?” she yelled. Everything echoed in this warehouse, but it sounded like she was at the bottom of the stairs.

 

Steve managed a groan.

 

“Good,” Natasha called. “You’ve lasted this long, old man.”

 

The fighting continued, and as long as it continued, Natasha was alive.

 

And then suddenly there was silence, and Natasha’s face appeared over Steve.

 

“Alright,” she said, looking down at him and stripping off her compression top. “You got cut up pretty good, huh.”

 

“Mmm,” was the best Steve could manage.

 

She rocked his body from side to side, sliding her shirt under him, and then _jesusmarymotherofgod_ she was tying the arms of her shirt around his hips and over his belly so fucking _tight._

 

“Up you get,” she said next, pulling at him.

 

When he was upright and his vision stopped featuring dancing black spots, Steve got a good look at Natasha. “Looked better,” he slurred. She had a bruise already forming on her jaw, purple finger marks around her throat, and blood leaking from a cut that disappeared into her hair line.

 

“So have you, sweet talker,” she told him, guiding him to the stairs. “This is the tricky part,” she told him. “I’m not heavy enough to stop you from falling down the stairs and cracking that pretty head. You just gotta stay upright until then.”

 

Steve wished he wasn’t this much trouble.  She’d have been so much better off without him. “Mkay,” he slurred.

 

They made it down the stairs, but barely. As Steve started to slump forward Natasha was there in front of him, planting one shoulder against his solar plexus and wrapping his other arm over and around her neck.

 

He felt her shuffle, and when she jolted him up he might have screamed. “I know, Rogers, I know,” she said, hunched under his weight, her shoulders narrow and sharp under his torso. He’d have to ask her how she managed it, when he had air in his lungs again. How did she fireman’s carry him to their car when he weighed more than double her whole body?

 

The last thing he remembered was Natasha staggering as they approached the car, his boots scuffing as they dragged.

 

~~~

 

Steve woke to a needle piercing the flesh of his abdomen.

 

“I tried to numb you up,” said Natasha. She hadn’t looked up from his belly, and yet she’d known he was awake. “But I don’t think it worked.”

 

“S’okay,” he said. “Water?”

 

Natasha shoved some pillows under his shoulders, put a plastic bottle of water in his hand, and went back to the wound she’d clearly cleaned.

 

“I know with the serum it might be prettier if we don’t stitch it,” she said, quickly sliding another into his skin with a practiced hand. “But I don’t trust you to stay still that long.”

 

Steve nodded. Natasha bent back over her work, the tips of her red hair brushing over the cleaned skin of his stomach. She knotted stitch after stitch, and Steve found himself lulled by the pricking rhythm of her work.

 

“Don’t know why I was so worried ‘bout my shield,” he told her as she smeared antiseptic over the seam of his skin. “Got you.”

 

“I’m not bulletproof,” said Natasha. She placed a bandage over the angry red stripe and taped it down neatly. “Wish I was.”

 

She walked away, still shirtless, trailing the smell of gardenia shampoo and coppery blood in the air as she went. When she came back, it was with a shaving mirror, which she propped up against a glass containing used, bloody swabs.

 

Steve tried to think of the words he’d need to make her understand.

 

“You’re-  always been there. Right over my left shoulder. Always come back. Always protecting my flank. Just like the shield. Don’t need it if I have you.”

 

She’d been using the mirror to swab at the wounds on her face, but the look she turned on him then: it was _open,_ open and filled with the kind of hopeful terror that a prisoner might wear while waiting for a pardon.

 

“Steve,” she said, low and throaty. “Steve.”

 

He fell asleep again with her lips on his forehead and the scent of her hair in his nose.


	2. Ilya

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING: Dub-con. This chapter references (but does NOT show) Natasha having sex with some of her targets during her time with the Red Room. Those encounters would have been dub-conny as hell, even though Natasha likely doesn't think of them that way.

_In this world and every other, there was so much red in her ledger._

 

The old Imperial Hospital was silent at this time of the morning. Visiting hours had not quite begun, but a few families huddled in waiting rooms anyway: pre-op hours were early, and everyone she met, from the patients to the nurses, were grey-faced with fatigue.  

 

Natalia knew that she didn’t look much better. She’d let her hair frizz slightly, and had used pressed powder to make herself tired and wan. It worked: nobody who glanced at her held her eye.

 

She was the Black Widow She was the best.

 

This morning she’d woken up, fully comprehending and all at once, while the Soldier sat eerily still in the corner of their little safehouse flat. He’d watched as she’d eaten an egg and done her makeup. He’d watched as she dressed herself and secreted weapons. He’d watched as she’d slipped inside the hospital, and she knew he’d be there when she returned.

 

How strong his mind must be, to keep learning and performing despite all they’d done to him. He’d lost his shoulder now. Where once he’d had flesh, and only a prosthetic at the elbow, now his shoulder seamed with raised red scars. They looked fresh and angry.

 

(Natalia had no obvious, lasting scars quite yet. But inside, where they’d changed her, she _felt_ fresh and red and angry. She’d been the Black Widow for a year, now. A year of lies and webs and blood.)

 

Her target was named Maxim Evansky. A thin man with washed-out skin and thinning hair, he worked in the Party as a mid-level accountant. He had two children and a wife in Sparrow Hill. He’d come into the hospital for a hernia operation, and he would not leave the hospital again.

 

Maxim Evansky was selling Party information. He expertly hid the money in his own books, but someone knew. Someone knew, because Natalia had been deployed to remove him.

 

Natalia did not deal in evidence or appeals. Natalia dealt in death.

 

“How will you do it?” asked the Soldier as he walked with her through the chilly early-morning streets of Moscow.

 

“How do you kill one man without anyone suspecting assassination?” asked Natalia in return. “The mission is to be performed with the utmost secrecy. There cannot even be rumors that this was a planned death. So tell me, soldier. How do you hide one death where it will not be questioned?”

 

He grunted and continued to walk beside her. Even through their thin jackets she could feel the heat radiating from him. Truly he had been built for the winter. (Truly, he had been _built._ )

 

“You hide one accidental death among _many_ accidental deaths,” said Natalia.

 

They’d never told her not to cause a scene. They only said that his death must be above question. _And so it would be._

 

“You seem eager to begin your mission,” said the Soldier.

 

Natalia allowed herself to smirk at him. “Have you not realized?” she asked. “I enjoy performing the impossible.”

 

She slipped down into the basements first. There were emergency generators here, all wired into the lights and oxygen pumps, and those would go first. It was a simple task to fray some wiring here, to corrode through a fuel tank there. Within ten minutes the room had filled with the smell of gasoline.

 

Next she was headed up the stairs, enjoying the way her muscles pulled and bunched as she jogged past each landing. She needed to get to the elevator shaft at the top of the building. There would be plenty of built-up oil in the gears; plenty of things that could fail.

 

When the fire started it was mostly smoke streaming onto all the floors from the elevator shaft. Then the little explosive she’d planted in the breaker box went off, and then all those chemicals began to catch. People screamed and ran and wept, but Natalia wasn’t there to hear it.  

 

She was walking side-by-side with the Soldier through the streets of Moscow, lazily stopping at a cart to buy roast chestnuts in a waxed paper cone.   


“Here,” she said, forcefully passing one into the Soldier’s metal palm. “You’ll like it.”

 

He looked from the nut to Natalia to the vendor, and eventually put the treat in his mouth. “Evansky,” he said finally. “Is he gone?”

 

People were running along the sidewalk near them now, and when the breeze shifted Natalia could smell smoke on the wind. “Yes,” she said. “Just before the evacuation began.”

 

“Good work, Romanova,” he said. “This was a good mission.” He looked sad as he said it, and he shouldn’t. He _couldn’t_ feel that way, not for her. Not even for himself.

 

“And we are good weapons,” she said as behind them, a hospital burned. She pressed a chestnut to his lips, and was pleased when he took it with only a confused furrowing of his brows. (He shouldn’t feel sad. There wasn’t a point.)

 

That evening, when the city was sooty and subdued and mournful, a young woman and her stoic companion boarded a train back to Stalingrad. From there they were met by a car, and soon Natalia and the Soldier were debriefing inside a lush parlor on the third floor of the Red Room manor.

 

“Report,” said Petrovich.

 

“Natalia entered the Imperial Hospital at 0614,” said the Soldier. “She reappeared just before 0650. Evansky has been confirmed dead.” His voice was lower during reports than it was during conversation. How much programming did he have in his head?

 

“Romanova?”

 

“Evansky died minutes before the hospital evacuated. He was injected with a fatal dose of morphine. I wasn’t noticed in the panic.”

 

“Good.” Petrovich looked from Natalia to Madame Babakova, who gave a short nod. “Come, Natalia. Soldier.”

 

He rose and led them out of the door, down the sweeping central staircase, and down the hall to what had once been the servants’ stairs. From there it was a short, chilly walk to the detention cells.

 

“Comrade?” asked Natalia. She’d done well, she knew she’d done well. She hadn’t done anything to earn a night in the detention rooms.

 

“Quiet, Romanova.”

 

Petrovich stopped at the end of the hall and opened a heavy steel door. There was a chair inside, almost identical to the one in which she’d seen the Soldier tortured years ago. She couldn’t see any probes. But that didn’t mean-”

 

“No,” she said quietly, the word borne to the surface of her mind on bubbling waves of panic.

 

“Romanova,” said Petrovich, pushing her forward. “Soldier, get her in the chair.”

 

She’d fought him before. She’d trained with him for years, and had had to survive the Soldier as her final test before graduation. She knew his moves, knew his body, but never before had Natalia fought him like this.

 

She leapt, vaulting to his shoulders and scissoring her legs around his neck. He staggered to the wall and slammed her against it, cracking her skull against the stone. While she was dazed he ripped her down, trying to throw her to the floor, but she caught his hand and rolled, pulling him off balance, trying to move quickly enough to get to his throat again, but he rolled them, tugging at her, and she felt her left arm pop out of the socket.

 

No problem.

 

She shifted to the right, feinting and trying to get back between the Soldier and the door, because she _knew_ she could take down Petrovich. They all knew it.

 

The Soldier didn’t let her. He caught her again, knocking her head against the floor, and then gripped her so hard, bruisingly tight, as he forced her into the chair. Restraints automatically clasped around her arms, but her legs were free. She wrapped them around his shoulder and smashed the bone of her forehead against his. The headbutt did nothing but stun her; he pulled back to secure her legs as Petrovich and Madame entered the room.

 

“Really, Natalia,” Petrovich drawled. “We’re here to give you a gift.”

 

“You are the best,” said the Soldier, unprompted. Her vision was hazy, and adrenaline was burning through her system, and she wondered- did he remember? _Would she?_

 

“Hold her still,” Petrovich ordered again, and Natalia wondered if it was worth screaming over. No one would come for her. _She had no place in the world._

 

The Soldier leaned over her, holding her left arm first. “This will hurt,” he told her, his eyes so pale and clear and sad. “But if you live- you will be a weapon like no other.”

 

If she lived.

 

She was Natalia Romanova, First graduate of the Red Room program. She would live. Survival was a vector; a path with length and direction and energy, and Natalia wouldn’t get off it yet.

 

“You will be great,” the Soldier whispered to her as the first injection began. “And you will live.”

 

Soon, too soon, red pain filled her veins, throbbing in time with her traitorous heart. She _wished_ her heart would stop, she prayed for the ceaseless tattoo to give in, and yet it thundered on, forcing burning, painful, molecular change through her veins. _I am the Black Widow,_ she thought to herself, a desperate refrain. _I am the Black Widow, the best of the Red Room. I have survived. I am strong, and smart, and capable._

 

_I am the Black Widow. And death cannot take that from me._

 

And all the while, as her vision bled red, as she was unmade, she remained pinned to that painful chair by sad, pale eyes.

 

* * *

  

_Somewhere in the world, she promised to remember._

 

Bruises faded so much faster after the Procedure. After two days most were gone, and if any remained on the third day they were yellow and easy to hide. Sometimes Natalia would press on them, wondering about the changes in her body, wondering how long she’d stay like this. Death was never something you could avoid.

 

Her current set of bruises had faded to green, and she ran the cheap soap over them as roughly as she had the rest of her skin.  She’d spent a long weekend inside the American embassy in London playing pet. One of Petrovich’s contacts had ‘procured’ her for him. It had been irritating to fake a Russian accent for the extent of their time together, but it had worked. He’d told her of the Army’s supply movements in Vietnam, had complained about his superiors, and had half-heartedly joked about how he’d never be as rich as he was if he’d been born in a poor Red country.

 

He’d been a pig, and he’d enjoyed making her cry. He’d especially enjoyed ‘comforting’ her afterwards.

 

Eventually the cheap hotel ran out of hot water and Natalia stepped out into the steamy air of the tiny bathroom. The silver was beginning to chip off the mirror, and through the condensation she could only see the outline of herself: a lean streak of marble topped by wet, heartsblood hair.

 

It had been _such_ a pity she’d left the ambassador alive.

 

The white linen shift was clean and familiar against her skin: as she’d grown the Red Room-issued nightclothes had grown with her. Over that went a sweater she used for undercover missions, and then she stepped out into the dank room where the Soldier was waiting.

 

“Do you require assistance?” he asked, his eyes flicking from the doorway to her and back again.

 

“No,” said Natalia, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. They would stay long enough to verify the information the ambassador had given her, and then they would catch a train back to newly-minted Volgograd.

 

“I am tasked with ensuring the safety and health of my team,” said the Soldier. His gaze flicked to her legs, where she knew a few bruises still faded.

 

“Nothing to worry over,” Natalia told him. “Bruises fade.”

 

“Faster, now,” said the Soldier, and she thought there was sadness in those razor-sharp eyes of his.

 

“Yes,” said Natalia, false-cheer in her voice. “A more effective tool.”

 

_I am a credit to the Motherland; the only mother I’ve known. I am the Black Widow._

 

She wasn’t sure how she felt about the Procedure yet. It had been an honor, just like Petrovich’s approval was an honor, but each time- each victory- he was satisfied less and less. She would need to find some new, impossible thing to achieve for him.

 

“Do you need food?”

 

She shrugged. It was too late for much to be available, and she wasn’t interested in the preserved rations they carried.

 

The Soldier clearly decided not to press the issue.

 

Natalia lay back on the bed, long-used to falling asleep with an ally in the room. She needed it: she’d allowed herself only snatches of rest when the ambassador had left the room; perhaps three hours in total. She could go a long time without sleep, but even the Black Widow had her limit.

 

“Sleep,” he told her.

 

It was a command she was willing to obey.

 

~~~

 

A shift in the air woke her, because she _knew_ the Soldier made no noise. For all his density and height he moved silently and with an eerie, uncanny grace; moved like half-seen figures formed from frozen mist on cold, pre-dawn mornings.

 

The flimsy table lamp was still on, but the Soldier was no longer in his seat beside it. Instead he was standing beside the bed, peering down at Natalia’s legs.

 

“Soldier?” She’d asked the question more sharply than she should address a superior. Likely she’d be reported for it.

 

His face twisted, lips tightening, and then he backed away again. “Shouldn’t be like that,” he said, and for the first time in years a strong American accent twisted the vowels of his words.

 

She wished now she’d taken the time to turn down the covers. It was tempting to go back to sleep, but assessing the Soldier’s status was a more pressing matter. “What do you mean it ‘shouldn’t be like that’?” she asked him, pushing herself up and leaning against the flat pillows.

 

Her nightgown had ridden up just over an inch, and the undergarments were standard cotton issue. If he’d gotten a glimpse, it was nothing worse than what he’d seen around the school. Fighting was a frequent and intimate experience.

 

The Soldier looked at the lamp, his flesh fingers tightening and releasing every-so-subtly on his knee.

 

“If this is because I’m a woman-” Natalia started, disappointment curdling in her stomach already. Of all the people in the world, the Soldier should know better than to underestimate women. He’d helped to train some of the deadliest girls alive.

 

“ _Nyet,”_ said the Soldier, shaking his head before trailing off into English. “It’s... just not like that.”

 

Natalia could pretend he she didn’t know what he was talking about. She could go to sleep and pretend this hadn’t happened.

 

But inside herself, she’d wondered too. She’d learned seduction like any other skill; had practiced on marks in bars and on the streets of a dozen different cities. She’d been… not a participant in, but party to, a half-dozen fetishes that bordered on the profane. The encounters were memorable only for their usefulness and the weaknesses the men had displayed.

 

(She was made of marble, and her womb was a salted field no seed could sow. She was thankful for that now. It made ... _this,_ so much easier.)

 

Natalia didn’t go back to sleep. She didn’t scold the Soldier for his impertinence. Instead she watched him, her eyes tracing his familiar profile, and wondered if she’d remember him. (She’d already lost some things, and had gained others. She could remember dancing with the Imperial Ballet; could remember turning thirty-two _fouettés en tournant_ to the breathless anticipation of an eager crowd. The timing didn’t work, but nonetheless she could _remember._ )

 

They were both aware of the other, in that grungy little room. Both more than capable of sitting in silence until dawn.

 

“I remember,” said the Soldier, so quietly the hair on Natalia’s nape prickled to attention. “I remember kissing a redheaded girl. She smiled under my mouth.”

 

_Why was he telling her this?_

 

Perhaps… because he had nothing to lose. He would be put back in that chair, and he would forget all over again. In every likelihood, so would she. It was better than a priest, because these were only temporary secrets. They would carry this knowledge for a short time only.

 

_She smiled under my mouth._ There had been no heat in the words, but they rang in Natalia’s ears anyway, drowning out all the warnings her training had provided. ( _Do not engage!)_

 

Instead she told him, “Then show me.”

 

His gaze snapped to hers predator quick. “Natalia…” he said, his voice a caress of prefabricated regret.

 

No one could say Natalia Romanova wasn’t brave. “I want to understand,” she told him. “Why fucking makes people so weak.” Thus far nothing she’d experienced had made her want more, and yet so many people broke promises and laws and decency for what lay between their legs.

 

“I’m not a child,” she said when he looked doubtful.

 

“I know,” he said, in Russian again. “You never were.”

 

“If- if you don’t wish it, I’ll go back to bed,” she said, scooting and reaching for the edge of the covers. She should have gotten under the sheet hours ago.

 

“Natalia,” the Soldier said again. “This… I can’t give you anymore.”

 

She knew that. Natalia suspected it made the Soldier feel better to say it out loud. Probably he’d been an honest man before he’d defected (though more and more, she was starting to suspect that the Party had taken him; had spirited him away like dark fairies in the night.)

 

“I know,” she told him, her throat thick with anticipation and nerves. “We… you and I. We have what we have when we have it.”

 

The Soldier nodded and slowly crossed back to the bed. He was strong and glacially beautiful: remote and massive and warping the landscape around him.

 

“What should I call you?” Natalia asked. Her voice was almost disdainful, an attempt to deflect her nerves. She hadn’t been nervous about taking someone to bed since- in years. She wouldn’t be nervous now.

 

The Soldier sat on the edge of the bed beside her. His hips were near hers but angled away, his booted feet on the floor. He glanced at her from the corner of his eye and then looked down at his lap. “I- don’t know. I don’t have a name.”

 

Natalia didn’t reply that everyone had a name. Nothing was taken for granted in the Red Room, names included. “You should give yourself a name,” she said, reaching out and taking his right hand. It was warm and calloused and larger than hers, and he smoothly wove their fingers together.

 

The Soldier made a face at her suggestion, his lips twisting again. “I’d rather kiss you,” he said, glancing at her through his lashes. The dark scruff on his face only made his eyes that much brighter in comparison.

 

“Alright,” said Natalia. Had anyone just wanted to kiss her?

 

The Soldier turned so that he was angled over her, his weight braced on the mattress by her hips, and then he laid his lips over her. His lips were soft and slightly chapped, and he drug them across hers lightly, nearly chastely, and _oh_ how his eyes glittered.

 

“We both kiss with our eyes open,” said Natalia, her hushed words brushing against his mouth.

 

She watched as his eyes went vacant for a second. “I think you said that to me before,” he said, sitting back a little. “That you had your eyes wide open.”

 

Natalia’s stomach cramped at that idea; that the chair had stolen those memories from her, and there was nothing she could do about it. The past was gone. Maybe if she worked hard enough, and was clever enough, she could make her own future.

 

“If I was with you,” said Natalia, pushing aside her melancholy. “I’m sure they were.” She lightly dug her fingernails into the flesh of his bicep.

 

“Pardon me,” said the Soldier, leaning back over her, his breath a soft caress against her face. “But I think I was supposed to say that.”

 

“I think you’re right,” said Natasha, running a hand down his organic shoulder. “You _should_ be telling me I’m pretty.”

 

“Dazzling,” he agreed, and leaned back in for another kiss. He sounded more American again, and she didn’t mind. Didn’t mind it at all.

 

Almost lazily they explored each other’s mouths, alternating between light, questing kisses and ones so deep, so desperate and all-consuming that she thought it was possible they’d suffocate together on that bed, their bodies locked around each other. Gradually the Soldier sank down on the bed beside her, stretched out between her and the door, his palm running over the length of her: shoulder to collar bone to ribs to hip to thigh and back again, long sinuous strokes that relaxed as much as the inflamed.

 

“Alexander,” said Natalia when they broke apart, gulping air.

 

“Who?” asked the Soldier, his eyes sharpening again.

 

“You,” said Natalia, pressing a kiss to that stubborn chin. “You could be Alexander.”

 

“No,” said the Soldier. Slowly, telegraphing every movement, he rolled himself over her, settling in the cradle of her hips. They were both still fully dressed, and Natalia’s nightshift was bunched around her thighs.

 

“This,” said the Soldier, toying with it. “This needs to come off.”

 

“Yes,” said Natalia, sitting up so he could wiggle it over her head. “Now your shirt.”

 

He hesitated before tugging off his jacket and the button-up shirt that was a part of his undercover streetwear. “Is there anywhere you wouldn’t like me to touch?” Natalia asked quietly.

 

The Soldier flicked his eyes away before gruffly saying, “The shoulder. It- I don’t like it.”

 

“Alright,” said Natalia, nodding and settling back against the pillows.

 

“What about you?” He settled against her again, pressing a kiss to the wing of one clavicle before pressing up to look at her face.

 

Natalia thought about it. She could handle anything, but this wasn’t about- about handling, or maintaining a level of serviceability. If she was going to commit this crime (and she was under no illusions about it not being a crime) she wanted to enjoy it. “I don’t- I don’t like having my hair pulled,” she said. “And I don’t want to be held down.”

 

His eyes went sad again, like storm clouds over a turbulent sea. “I don’t want to hurt you, Tashen’ka.”

 

The corner of her mouth tipped up, and she combed her fingers through his overlong hair. “I don’t want you to be hurt either.” Mentally she added, _but wishes are pointless. We will be hurt, over and over. We have been built for hurt._

 

He pressed a kiss to the shadow of her jaw, and her cheek, and her lips. His stubble was rough, contrasting with the touch of his hands and mouth on her body. The mood between them was wistful again, and that wouldn’t do. If they only had one night, one brief window of time in which to decide for themselves, they should enjoy it.

 

“Grigory,” she said, smirking up at him.  

 

He groaned. “Do you hate me so?”

 

“You’re _acting_ like a Grigory,” she said, rocking her hips up into his. Until now he hadn’t acted as though he’d even noticed her nudity, and Natalia wasn’t sure what to make of it. With- she wouldn’t compare him to her marks. But this hadn’t happened before.

 

“Never let it be said,” said the Soldier, dropping his head to tug a pale nipple into his mouth, “That I acted like a Grigory.”

 

His mouth was wet and hot and talented, knowing just when to suck and when to use his teeth. Not to let one go lonely, he switched to the other, the dark of his hair contrasting with the porcelain-paleness of her skin. Natalia let her hands roam over his good shoulder and his neck and collarbone and chest. He was heavily muscled and warm beneath her touch, and time… time went slowly, like a honey-gold drizzle, seeping pleasure into her bones.

 

“I want,” said the Soldier, lifting his head to reveal kiss-swollen lips. “To taste you.”

 

Natalia swallowed. His gaze was hot, and his vowels long and western. She had a predator in her bed, a stranger from a far off land, and he wanted to taste her.

 

“I’d like that,” she told him honestly. Nobody had offered before. Natalia only knew it was done because she’d been the one to do it.  

 

The Soldier slid down her body, lazily sucking small bruises over the ridges of her ribs and the planes of her belly. (Both of them knew the bruises would fade by morning.) As he mapped her topography with his tongue and teeth and lips his fingers slid down over her mons to part her, the tips of his fingers stroking over and around her, learning this most intimate part of her anatomy, too.

 

“Ah, Natalia,” he breathed when he finally lifted his face from her hip. He was gentle as he nudged his shoulders beneath her thighs, laying one across his steel shoulder, the other across the warmth of his skin. “Pretty. Pretty here too. Though I miss the red,” he commented, running one finger over her hairless labia. (That… that had been a lesson from Madame that Natalia was willing to forget.)

 

“You can’t miss what you haven’t had,” she said, and- and he was too slow to nod. It was entirely possible that they had been here before, in this same position, any number of unknown times.

 

Neither of them commented on it. He turned his head slightly to press a kiss to yellow bruises on one thigh, and then the other, and then his warm fingers parted her and he licked a swipe up, hot and wet and languorous.

 

There was a benefit to him having trained her for so long. He’d seen her with a broken nose, covered in snot and blood and sweat. He was familiar with just how far her body could bend, how her breath sounded through clenched teeth, how she sweated when her heart-rate flew.

 

All of that familiarity boiled down to this: there was no shame or shyness between them in that bed. Both of those were traits that had been removed from them long ago.

 

It was quiet in their room with the old radiator cycled off and limited street noise outside. Instead, for the first time (possibly ever) the faded, peeling walls and cheap curtains felt cozy. They absorbed the sound of the Soldier’s mouth on her, wet and sucking and patient. It felt like he could go forever without breath, and until that moment he’d been studiously ignoring her clit.

 

“Soldier,” she hissed, tugging at his hair. “Demyan,” she said, laughter in her tone. “Please.”

 

Two shocking blue eyes opened to look speculatively up the length of her body. His brows looked sly, and without breaking their gaze he scraped the scruff of his chin against her clit, just this side of too hard. “Not Demyan,” he said, his voice sex-rough already.

 

“Not- oh,” she gulped as he set his mouth back to work. “Not Demyan.”

 

Now that he’d found her clit the Soldier was done playing. He drove her up almost too quickly, his mouth sealed and insistent, the swipes of his tongue strong. When her stomach muscles started jumping she couldn’t keep herself from hitching her hips against his face.

 

“Mmm,” he rumbled, not pausing his attentions. It vibrated into her, and _oh,_ Natalia was close. This was so much better than her own fingers during solitary, unmonitored showers.

 

The Soldier’s metal hand slipped over Natalia’s hip to press into her belly, the distance between his thumb and pinky nearly enough to span her natural waist. He didn’t stop her from moving, but his hand pressing down was an anchor, a tether to the earth as he pushed her to very nearly painful levels of arousal.

 

“Soldier,” she whispered, tugging at his hair, her other hand clamped around his steel wrist.

 

It was all the warning he needed. He flicked his eyes to hers again, and she fell apart with that laser-blue gaze pinning her in place, holding her to him as everything else (pain and fear and uncertainty) rushed away in the tingling buzz of genuine pleasure.

 

“Nataska,” he said, wiping his face on the inside of her thigh before sliding up to lazily kiss her mouth. His chin was still tacky and he tasted like her, like the life neither of them could have.

 

“Ilya,” she told him when he pulled back for air, his lips swollen and very nearly bruised.

 

“Ilya?” he asked.

 

He rested his face beneath her jaw, and lazily Natalia toyed with his hair. She was glad he wasn’t foolish enough to call himself too heavy for her to hold like this. “Like the story of Ilya  Muromets… a _bogatyr_. He was made inhumanly strong for having faith.”

 

He rumbled a wordless question into her skin.

 

“Similar to…” she remembered the western fairy tales they’d studied like any other academic information. “Like a knight. Like Sir Gawain.”

 

She could feel his cock pressed against her thigh, tight against their bodies, but her Soldier wasn’t doing anything about it.

 

“I could live with Ilya,” he said, propping himself over her again.

 

“Well then, my sweet Ilya,” she said, all pressing nails and purring voice. “Let’s take care of you.”

 

“We don’t-”

 

Nobody she’d ever met could look melancholy the way Ilya could.

 

“Please.”

 

It worked the way she knew it would. He sank down to kiss her and slid the blunt tips of his right hand down between them, sliding one finger and then two inside her still-damp body.

 

That put a shit-eating grin on a face that suddenly looked younger. “Ah, pussycat,” he said. “You do want me.” Ilya reared back and unbuckled his belt, pulling open his trousers and shoving them low enough on his hips to expose his cock. Then he leaned over her again, and pressed a kiss to the end of her nose.

 

“Of course,” said Natalia, rocking up into him. (It was nice to have him bracketing her like this. Safe, in a way that she rarely ever was.)

 

“How much?” he asked, slipping back into English. His mother tongue was so fluid, so much more expressive than his clipped Russian.

 

“Enough to do this, here with you,” she said as he slid inside her body.

 

For a second they both lay frozen together, adjusting to Natalia’s truth and the joining of their bodies.

 

“Oh, sweetheart,” said the Sold- _Ilya,_ still in English, pressing his forehead to hers.

 

Neither of them said anything else. They didn’t need to. He rocked into her slowly, enjoying the drag of his skin on hers, and patiently touched her everywhere, leaving his weight braced on the arm they’d forced on him. It was melancholy and reverent and gentle, and everything Natalia hadn’t had before. Twice she had to count off her breaths to keep tears from forming in her eyes. (She didn’t cry. And if the Soldier noticed, he didn’t say anything.)

 

Eventually, as all things do, it ended. His hips were rougher, pushing hers into the bed, and in an uncharacteristically clumsy act Ilya shoved his hand between them to press at her clit until she came. He was in her for the first ripple of her orgasm, and then his cock was in his hand and brushing over her stomach, spilling come as it went.

 

He pressed one last kiss to her forehead before pushing off her and walking to the tiny bathroom, returning with a rough washcloth.

 

“Thank you,” Natalia told him when she was tidied and finally under the covers. Ilya was stretched out beside her, his hand in hers, but he’d refused to actually get in the bed. He’d fucked her with his boots and trousers on; probably he’d be too worried about getting tangled in the sheets to sleep well.

 

“Don’t thank me,” he said, and it sounded almost pained.

 

“Alright,” said Natalia. She settled in to sleep, not bothered by the light, secure in the knowledge that whatever came at her tonight, it would have to come through Ilya to get her.

 

She dozed, suspended between waking and sleeping, aware of the Soldier’s body next to her, tipping the mattress his way.

 

“I’ll remember you,” he whispered as she drifted off.

 

“I’ll remember you too,” she promised him foolishly.

 

“It’s impossible,” he said, running his hand over the crown of her head.

 

“So are we,” she reminded him. People who could heal like them didn’t really exist.

 

“Impossible girl,” said Ilya fondly, and then she was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Thanks for taking a chance on this story of mine. It should be complete at about 30,000 words (I've already finished 20k+) and I cannot believe that it started out as a oneshot. HA. 
> 
> On calling Bucky "Ilya": I read an interesting post about how Bucky wouldn't have been called a variation of 'Jacob' during WWII because _Yakov_ is a Russian Jewish name. So no credit to me there, it's just more information I stole from the internet. Also, I know this chapter was all Nat with Bucky. To make up for that, next chapter it's 100% Nat with Steve!
> 
> Thank you to all who have commented/subscribed/supported the story! It really does mean so much. It's also awesome to see the fandom pulling together after the ...ah, production that was Endgame.


	3. Always Will

_ Once more Natasha finds herself alone; once more she finds herself restrained to a chair, but this time- this time someone comes for her.    _

 

In ballet, the human body is pushed to its limit, and then past it, over and over- feet bow, hips rotate, spines bend, on and on and on. Pain fuels beauty, and art, and perfection. 

 

In torture, the human body is pushed to its limit, and then past it, over and over- nerves spark, cuts bleed, burns throb, on and on and on. Pain fuels information, and truth, and the future. 

 

The line between ballet and torture isn’t a line, but a thought, a word, a human distinction applied only through context. Ballet is pain, and it is beautiful. Torture is pain, and it is brutal. Natasha was more than passingly familiar with them both. 

 

Her captor pulled a dart from her thigh. “You survived,” he said, though Natasha hadn’t opened her eyes. “I’m surprised, Comrade.”

 

(Her nightmares were always in Russian.)

 

“Surprised?” she asked, opening her eyes. There was a yellow incandescent bulb above her, suspended from a stone ceiling. Natasha could feel cold metal against her skin, restraints around her body, and  _ please, no.  _ From the way she was laying, slightly inclined, she was in a chair. The Chair. (They’d had many. One for each facility, it seemed. There was always another punishment; always another chair.)

 

Natasha couldn’t move her body. Whatever they’d drugged her with, she couldn’t move her body. She could feel everything, from her toes to the cuts on her arms to the bruising on her face.  _ But she couldn’t move.  _

 

She’d done this before. She would survive it again. 

 

She huffed out a sigh and closed her eyes, the picture of lazy indolence. He’d think she was choosing to lay still, just biding her time.

 

Her captor smiled down at her. “You don’t know me,” he said. “But I know you. I was to begin the next Red Room; I was being given supplies and information, and then do you know what happened, Natasha?”

 

“Hmm.” A noncommittal noise. All of these men, all the fools who had tied her to so many things over so many years… they all loved to talk. 

 

“You put all of Hydra’s files out into the light,” he said. “I was in those files. I had an apartment in Georgetown, I had  _ everything,  _ and suddenly the FBI had my name and I was running to Russia. Because of you.”

 

“I didn’t see your files.”

 

She willed her fingers to work. She’d been vulnerable before, but this… oh, this would join all her other nightmares. The Black Widow didn’t fear death. But suffering? Every creature fears suffering. Suffering is pain without hope. 

 

“I still had a few friends,” he said. “They pulled my files and wrote algorithms to remove any re-uploads, much as someone had done for you.”

 

Natasha hadn’t known that. She’d been too busy trying to go to ground, too busy looking up information on Barnes for Steve.

 

A finger trailed down her cheek and Natasha opened her eyes again. Her captor was looking at her, his eyes assing. There wasn’t any anger there, and for the first time in so many years, Natasha knew despair. 

 

Angry people made mistakes. Angry people could be manipulated and turned. But someone like her? Someone who watched, and calculated, and waited for the right time? 

 

She would die here, in this room. 

 

“I’m Jason Montgomery,” he said, that finger resting over her pulse point. “And I am here, in this basement in frozen fucking Austria, because of you.”

 

Her fingers fluttered- she could move them now, but her arms were still useless, heavy and still. 

 

Amusement played over Montgomery’s features. “The tranquilizer your body is so valiantly metabolizing was meant for Rogers. You were asleep for quite awhile, Natalia. I was beginning to think you wouldn’t wake at all.”

 

_ That explained the headache.  _

 

“What did you want with him?” Natasha asked, voice even. 

 

“I’m to make the next round of weapons,” he said cooly. “It would behoove me to understand how the first generation work.”

 

He picked up a needle and rubber tubing and quickly had the needle beneath her skin, decanting blood into vials one-by-one.  _ One. Two. Three. Four.  _ Each clicked as he set them into the steel holders. 

 

“We still have samples from Barnes,” he said. “His serum was the second generation; it didn’t require the radiation or pressure chamber like Rogers. I thought to compare the two, to see if I could get the superior results from Rogers’ version, but with only the infusions, like Barnes.”

 

Another vial. She would be woozy if he took more, but she’d fought with less. She’d killed men with a heart fluttering for something to pump. 

 

“There,” he said eventually, sliding the needle out. “That should last for several rounds of testing. You’re an anomaly, Natasha,” he said. She could hear the tubes being capped, and then the opening and shutting of a door. Probably a freezer. She could wiggle her toes again, and  _ oh  _ how her head hurt, but she needed to stay alive. She needed to look for her chance to escape. 

 

That was the real lesson of the Red Room; the one rule that superseded all others: Nobody will come for you. No one will save you. If you wish to survive, you must save yourself. 

 

_ (She had no place in the world.) _

 

Montgomery was back, looking down at her. “I have what I needed,” he said. “But… you’re a legend, Natasha Romanov. Of the six recorded recipients of a full serum transfusion, you are the only one to have been awake for every day of her life. Schmidt was vaporized, Rogers was frozen, Barnes was maintained in cryo-sleep, Tatiana went mad, and the final subject died only hours after the transfusion completed. 

 

“You have by far the most mileage, but here you are: very alive, and looking only a decade older.”

 

She couldn’t move her legs. She could barely lift her head. And she was going to die in this basement. 

 

“I moisturize,” she told him. “I can recommend my routine if you’d like it.”

 

“How much can you take, Natasha Romanov?”

 

_ Anything.  _

 

He began with waterboarding. It wasn’t ever fun, and she had to talk herself out of panic every time, but she could hold her breath for six minutes. As long as he occasionally had to refill the water bucket, she’d live. 

 

Making notes in a journal, Montgomery moved onto her joints. The fingers of her right hand were first, followed by her shoulder. The fool: she’d had to pass this test every six months in the Red Room. They’d dislocate her shoulder and fingers and send her through the day, fighting and dancing and shooting and note-taking with her off hand. 

 

After a few years, she had no off-hand. 

 

The knives… were the worst.

 

“How quickly do you heal?” he asked, using a scalpel to make a thin incision from hip to hip beneath her belly button. He had his phone in his hand, a stopwatch running, and she could feel blood sliding down her skin. 

 

Natasha could flop her hands at the wrist now, but she still had no significant movement, and she still hadn’t screamed. There was no point in screaming: she refused to put on a show for this bastard, and nobody would hear her. It would only use energy her body needed to heal. (Oh, but it hurt. Her silence didn’t mean there wasn’t pain.)

 

_ I am the Black Widow. Even death cannot take that from me.  _ She’d been the one to earn that title; she’d been the one to survive the serum, to keep fighting and keep trying after being stripped down and remade over and over and  _ over.  _ She was  _ the  _ Black Widow. 

 

Something rumbled overhead, and Natasha wondered how deep they were. The last thing she remembered, she and Steve were in Austria, scoping out the base where he’d once rescued Bucky. SHIELD had never really let any of their old bases go, choosing instead to go underground, retracing their own footsteps. Based on all the evidence she and Steve had been able to gather, Hydra had been working from the same playbook. 

 

“Got company?” she asked. 

 

Montgomery was still busy watching the blood seeping from her body. “None expected,” he said. “You’re beginning to clot, Romanov. Less than three minutes. Impressive.”

 

“Thank you,” said Natasha, timing her breaths, choking her fear down. He’d left a tray of scalpels and tweezers near her. All she had to do was survive, and then she could get herself out of here and go look for Steve. Montgomery would make a mistake eventually. They all did. 

 

The ground rumbled again, and some kind of roaring was echoing in the corridor outside. “You sure that’s not a problem?”

 

“There’s a squadron of men and half a mountain of granite between the outside world and the two of us, Natasha,” said Montgomery, his voice a caress. “No one is coming.”

 

She’d known that. She’d known that for her entire life. (By her best guess, she was seventy-eight years old. Natasha had had plenty of time for that particular lesson to sink in.)

 

And yet, this time: she was wrong. 

 

There was a ringing clang from the outside, a thud against their door, and then-

 

Rogers was thundering into the room, throwing down what looked like a section of stone pillar that he’d seemingly used as a battering ram.  His face was covered in dirt, he had a gash above the collar of his tac suit that was slowly soaking into his shirt, and he had Natasha’s M249 SAW slung over his back with the muzzle pointed at the floor. 

 

_ He’d come for her. _

 

Steve didn’t stop moving. He’d burst through the door and only kept running, dropping the masonry and hurling himself at the false doctor.  Montgomery still had the scalpel in his hand, and when he made to jab it at Steve, Rogers broke the man’s arm at the elbow. 

 

Natasha had seen Steve in a lot of fights. She’d seen him take on aliens and robots and she’d watched footage of that fight in the elevator at SHIELD HQ. More recently they’d been up against trained Hydra operatives, and he’d still been fully aware of his strength, of how much force it took to neutralize a threat while keeping himself and his team safe. 

 

He’d never carried a gun into battle. Not one she’d seen. 

 

And through all of that, Natasha had never seen Steve fight like this. 

 

He’d broken Montgomery's arm mid-fall, and when they hit the floor Steve gripped the scientist's face with one of those graceful, massive hands and cracked his head against the floor. Still kneeling on him, Steve shot Montgomery in the chest and then head, the  _ dadadat! _ of the gun echoing off the cold walls. 

 

“Natasha. Where are you hurt?”

 

He was over to her so quickly, his blue eyes bright against his dirt-smeared face. 

 

“Shoulder, hand, belly. My head’s not great either,” she added, still focused on those azure-blue eyes. He was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, in those moments. He was salvation and hope and family tied up in a star-spangled package. 

 

One-handed he wrenched the restraints off her,  the metal screeching a melody of freedom. 

 

“Let’s get you out of here,” he said, turning to face the door. 

 

“Can’t move. They drugged me with something.” She’d said a lot of things over the years. She’d lied, she’d flirted with corrupted men, she’d hand-waved acts of atrocity that broke every law of human decency. Possibly none of those things bothered her the way admitting her immobility did. 

 

_ Don’t show weakness. Your vulnerability is another man’s opportunity. _

 

Unexpected (and previously unseen) aggression flickered across Steve’s face. 

 

“Not a problem,” he said. He tossed her over his shoulders like it was nothing, her right arm and right leg dangling down over his chest. He held her wrist loosely in his left hand, and the machine gun in the other. 

 

“The hell did you do, Rogers?” Natasha asked as he jogged out of the room and up a set of dimly-lit stairs. 

 

“They’d forgotten that I’d been here before,” said Steve, turning on the landing and heading up another flight. “So I snuck inside and stole some munitions and blew up one of the outer walls. Made ‘em think they were under attack from the outside, right? And while they were figuring that out, I torched the labs. Up where Bucky was kept. There’s a lot of shit in there that a firehose won’t put out. Then- I learned this from you.”

 

They were through another door, now, and jogging past offices with windows. It was night, and Steve was headed for an exterior door. 

 

“I, ah-” The door was locked, but not reinforced, and she felt the muscles in his shoulders bunch as he tore it off its hinges. “I tripped the security system and locked the bastards inside with the fire. Pretty sure there’s a sprinkler system,” he tacked on. 

 

Steve Rogers with a machine gun, a potty mouth, and a gift for cold murder was something that Natasha hadn’t been prepared to face. If she’d been feeling even a little bit better she’d have probably made a move on him. As it was, she was cycling through all her breathing exercises to keep herself from passing out. 

 

“Impressive,” she managed. 

 

Steve was sprinting flat-out across a dark lawn when the shooting started. 

 

“Shit!” he said, and one incredibly-coordinated movement he swung Natasha off his shoulders and into a bridal carry, clearly unwilling to use her as his shield in truth. 

 

“What’s the plan?” she asked when he ducked behind a grass-covered munitions bunker. 

 

He stuck his head out and looked quickly. “Only ways out are through the main gate, over the wall, or through the big hole I blew in it. We’re close to the gate.”

 

“Where are the shooters?” Natasha asked, aware of her pain, the blood seeping from both their wounds, and the odds that were overwhelmingly against them. 

 

_ I am the Black Widow. Not even death can take that from me. _

 

“Watchtower,” said Steve. “Don’t know how many others know we’re here, but backup will probably come soon. 

 

“How fast can you sprint?” she asked. He was still cradling her to his chest, his back to the cement of the bunker. 

 

“I’m down to a two minute, thirty second mile,” he said. “I could probably manage that with you.”

 

Two minutes. They could do this. 

 

When we step out, where’ll the tower be?” They were talking quickly, both knowing they needed to move before reinforcements arrived. (Though there was so much smoke in the air that maybe, just maybe, backup would be slow.)

 

“It’ll be over my right shoulder. It the gate’s at 12:00, the tower’ll be at 4:00.”

 

Natasha wriggled her fingers and flapped her wrists. Still couldn’t do much else, but if she could pull a trigger and hold up her own head, she could help them out of this. Later: later she could fall apart. 

 

“Give me the gun,” she said. “This  isn’t going to be comfortable for you, but it should work.”

 

“What’s the plan?” he asked. (He  _ trusted  _ her. He trusted her in a way she’d never seen before.)

 

“My legs up around your waist. Can’t grip much, but I’ll do what I can. You hold me there, and brace my right shoulder with your other hand. I’ll prop the gun on your left and shoot back at them. It should cover us for a couple minutes.”

 

He looked down at her, his soot-dark face blocking out a sea of stars above them. (Someone had told Natalia that she was like a star, once: burning, distant, and untouchable.)

 

“You sure about this?”

 

(He’d asked her that before throwing her sixty feet into the air to catch a Chitauri cruiser.)

 

She knew her line. “Sure,” she said with a twitch of her lips. “It’ll be fun.”

 

“You know, Romanov,” he said, shifting her weight as easily as she carried Clint’s kids. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”

 

“Save the lecture,” she told him as Steve braced the gun against her shoulder. She wouldn’t be able to brace for the kick, but Steve’s hand against the back of her shoulder would do it for her. 

 

“I don’t lecture,” Steve grumbled. 

 

“Now!” said Natasha, resting her cheek on the butt on the gun, focusing through the scope. 

 

Steve took off, and from her position against his chest it felt like he might just beat his own record. They flew across the hard-packed dirt of the yard, and as they hit the point of no return, the guard-tower spotted them. 

 

Natasha’s first shot went wide; she really couldn’t brace herself at all (Rogers had had to help fold her arms for her, but she could cry about it later) but he felt her jerk and braced his hand almost painfully hard against her. 

 

He was breathing like a racehorse between her thighs, and she sighted again, compensated for the bounce of Steve’s gait, and kept her finger on the trigger, cutting a swipe down the guard tower. She saw two fall, and motion drew her eye (and the muzzle of her gun) towards the third. He got off a shot that hit so close she could almost smell it, but hers was the one to find its target. He fell, and then Rogers was through the gate and still moving, his arms tight around her. 

 

They hadn’t planned this far. It was a mountainous area, which meant they’d had limited places to land the quinjet. They’d walked about a mile to get to the fort, and she wasn’t sure he could keep up this pace that long. 

 

Natasha shouldn’t have wondered. Headlights came down the road and Steve lept, crashing down into a ditch and rolling, taking her with him. 

 

“You okay?” he whispered from his sprawled position when the lights had faded. 

 

She wanted to say yes, but she’d have to wait. He’d knocked the air out of her, and she was having a hard time getting it back. 

 

“Natasha? Nat?”

 

He sounded so scared for her. 

 

She was just starting to get dizzy when her lungs finally expanded, sucking air. 

 

“Oh thank god,” said Steve. 

 

“Gotta move,” Natasha wheezed. 

 

“Okay.” He pulled her over his shoulders again, and then picked up the gun. “I blew up the east wall, so hopefully most of their attention is that way. The jet is off to the west.”

 

“Okay,” she parroted. 

 

It was a strange walk through the Austrian forest. There was enough of a moon for Steve to find his way, but Natasha was dangling over him for most of it. Eventually watching the ground bob by made her dizzy (or was it blood loss and pain?) so she closed her eyes and breathed. In for three, hold. Out for five, hold. Repeat. 

 

Steve didn’t ask her any questions. He knew better than that: always keep your ears open in hostile territory. 

 

_ He’d come for her.  _

 

Under it all ran disbelief. Someone had come to get her. 

 

In the Red Room, and then in the KGB, she was sent into situations with whatever intelligence her handlers decided to give her and a rendezvous point. There hadn’t  _ been  _ extraction plans. SHIELD had been slightly better. She’d been monitored, and they’d usually try to provide options for exits. It was nice, but it was also hollow: the missions she pulled were the ones with the highest stakes. Even if they’d wanted, SHIELD wouldn’t have had a clean exit in place for her. 

 

She was Natasha Romanov. She worked without a net. If she wanted to get out of a situation, she had to do it herself. 

 

And then… there’d been Steve. 

 

The lights inside the jet were disorienting, and Natasha felt her adrenaline waning completely. Once they got in the air they were safe. 

 

“Gonna pass out,” she told Steve as he laid her on the floor and stuffed a folded-up sweatshirt under her head. “Get us up.”

 

As she slid into darkness, she felt the engines rumble to life, carrying her away from the fort, and the dungeon, and the Chair. 

 

~~~

 

She woke up to Steve’s voice. 

 

“I’m sorry sweetheart,” he said quietly. She didn’t have to think about what he was sorry for, because she could feel the blunt edge of a set of scissors sliding through the top of her suit. He was peeling her out of the fabric. 

 

“It’s just me, Natasha. It’s Steve. I don’t know if you’re awake right now, but I’ve got to get you cleaned up. They got you pretty good, darlin’. ‘M not gonna be able to help you if you wake up and hit me, so just keep breathing, okay?”

 

Over the years (endless and red-tinged) Natasha had been woken from sleep and unconsciousness by uncountable hands. Some in the Red Room as part of her training. Others belonging to handlers, and many,  _ so many  _ medics. Rarely it had been a lover touching her, and those had been her favorite. 

 

She’d woken up to so many sets of hands touching her without her knowledge, and none of them had done this. None of the people attached to those hands had told her what they were doing. None of those people (even Clint) had made sure that she knew she was safe before she’d even opened her eyes. 

 

“I got the nav locked in for that safehouse outside Paris. I know it’s got more people, but I thought- I don’t know how long you’re going to be out, and I speak French. And they have- they have good doctors, if I need to get you one.”

 

Inside her traitorous chest, Natasha’s heart broke.  Tears picked at the corners of her eyes and slowly rolled to her hairline, because Steve thought she was a  _ person.  _ Steve thought she deserved this: he thought she deserved to have someone come for her; he thought she deserved gentleness and consideration. 

 

Weapons were maintained, cleaned, and put away for future use. 

 

_ People  _ were comforted, treated, and protected. 

 

Natasha had always been the former. It didn’t matter how civil the debriefing or how competent the medical staff. She hadn’t known it could be this.  She was the Black Widow. She was  _ Other. _

 

But apparently not to Steve. (For a moment, her mind threw up the memory of a cool silver hand brushing her hair off her forehead, but then it was gone again, lost to the depths). 

 

“Nat?” 

 

She felt Steve’s thumb brush a tear off her temple. “I want to give you something for the pain, but I don’t know what was in that drug. I’m sorry, sweetheart; I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.”

 

She opened her eyes to find Steve bent over her, his face still black with ash. “It’s okay,” she told him. “It’s okay. You can’t stop everything, Steve. I’m okay now.”

 

She watched as Steve got a grip on himself. The self-recrimination didn’t leave his eyes, but she could see his priorities shift. He had to make sure she was well. He had to make sure they were safe.  _ Then  _ his self-flagellation could begin. 

 

“I’ve got to take this off you,” he said, his fingers tugging gently at the elastic of her sports bra. “You’re bruised- just everywhere, Nat. How are you awake.”

 

_ Pride.  _ It had seen her through so much. 

 

“Okay,” she told him, and he quickly cut her out of it. 

 

“What can you tell me about the drug?” he asked, tone neutral as he started rinsing her skin with saline. 

 

“It was meant for you,” she said, breathing evenly. (He thought she was a  _ person. _ )

 

The cotton pads stilled against her sternum. “What?” he asked, and she opened her eyes again. 

 

“His name was Jason Montgomery. Former SHIELD, fled to Hydra’s arms when I posted everything online after Pierce. He was going to restart the Red Room, and he needed- samples. He wanted your DNA to see if he could recreate the serum.”

 

Steve looked so tired under all that dirt. Tired and defeated. “Sometimes,” he said, his voice distant. “Sometimes I wished Erskine had never invented the serum. I could have died back in the ‘40s and all this- all this shit over the serum wouldn’t have happened.”

 

“They’d already made the serum,” said Natasha. She dragged her arm slowly (so fucking slowly) to Steve’s leg and brushed her fingers against him. “If it had to be someone, I’m glad it was you. You’re a good man, Steve Rogers.” 

 

_ He thought she was a  _ person. 

 

Steve didn’t comment on that. “Still having problems moving?”

 

She’d been holding off fear and panic and pain for hours. She’d gone longer before, and she could hold off now, but- but she  _ was  _ a person. She’d decided that when she’d joined the Avengers; when she’d befriended Clint’s children, when she’d started collecting books. Those were things that people could do. 

 

She could let herself feel, now. 

 

“I can’t move my legs, Steve. I can’t get my arms up, or get away, or protect-”

 

His fingers stroked down her cheek, and his eyes were so wide and serious on hers. “I’ve got you, Nat. We’ll get you fixed up, and then you can kick my ass again and call it training.”

 

“I hate being helpless,” she whispered, watching to see when the revulsion would hit his face. “I hate being weak.”

 

“Natasha, sweetheart,” he told her, his voice grave. “You’re the strongest person I know.”

 

She blinked back tears and rolled her face away from him, looking blindly at the bench running along the lee side of the ship. 

 

She felt Steve return to swabbing at her skin and flushing out the cut on her belly. “You never ask for help, not where it matters. You ask for backup in a fight sometimes, but honestly, when was the last time that happened? You  _ are  _ the backup. We all- the rest of us- we make so much stuff about us. I broke a United Nations treaty and- and I’d do it again…”

 

His hand faltered where it was dabbing at the edge of the cut.

 

“...but I didn’t think about where that would leave the rest of you. Of  _ us. _ Tony, he makes every slight and compliment about him. Thor leaves for Asgard whenever he wants and when he’s here, he’s… oblivious feels like a strong word.”

 

Natasha smiled through her tears, and kept her face tipped away. “Thor is kind,” she said. “Have you seen him with people on the street? He’s so ...aware of how small our world normally is, and how delicate people are.”

 

“Thor is kind,” said Steve quietly. “And so are you.”

 

Natasha huffed air through her lips as Steve ripped open a paper packet. “You are,” he said, deftly slipping the needle through her skin. “But you hide it. How many weeks did you spend with me those first few months after the Tesseract? And Clint’s kids, and Wanda… they tried to beat that out of you, Nat. The people who- who trained you. They wanted a weapon that wouldn’t ever think of others. And they  _ failed.”  _

 

Natasha was crying in earnest now, and was desperately trying not to. It made her chest hurt and her stomach flex and  _ she couldn’t move and Steve could see her tears.  _

 

“I’m sorry, Tasha,” said Steve, and his voice was thick too. “I should have told you sooner.”

 

When she had her breath back under control Steve returned to stitching her up. “What I don’t understand,” he said when he began to pop her swollen fingers back into place,” is how you survived that tranq at all. Anesthetic doesn’t work on me, so something strong enough to get me to drop…”

 

It was her last, and best-kept secret. “Steve,” she said, creeping her fingers towards his knee again. She wanted to touch him. “Steve- I’m pretty sure I’m seventy-eight years old.”

 

She could feel his shock and curiosity radiating out like a vacuum. 

 

“I was- in the Red Room. Red Room was KGB, but it also worked with Hydra. After I graduated- after I proved myself, they gave me a version of the serum. And it worked. I’m not as sturdy as you, and not even half as strong, but I heal well. Above average cellular-regeneration. Above average endurance, but that’s about it. The scientist who worked on me thought I had about 30% of your enhancements.”

 

“Nat-”

 

“You know. Fury knows. Clint knows. That’s it. If any more people found out…”

 

“They don’t experiment on me,” he said gently. 

 

“You’re a national- Ah!” 

 

He’d popped her arm back in its socket, grunting at the force he’d needed. 

 

“You’re a national icon. People would notice if you disappeared. I’m the other ‘success’, and if I went dark. Well, nobody would notice.”  _ Or care,  _ went unsaid.

 

“I would,” said Steve. 

 

“Thanks, Steve,” said Natasha, closing her eyes. “I’m okay now. You can go clean yourself up.”

 

She could feel his eyes on her. “Alright,” he said eventually. “I’ll be right back.”

 

She let herself drift as she listened to water splashing in the little airplane bathroom. She felt open, peeled inside-out, armorless and raw. She didn’t think Rogers was a physical threat to her, but- well, she’d been taught to rely on a short list of one: herself. As training went it was brutal, but effective. Here she was, still alive. 

 

“You okay?” she slurred as he returned to the cargo space. She was so  _ tired.  _

 

“Just a little banged up,” he told her. “Already healing.”

 

“Mmm,” she told him. 

 

“Natasha- can I hold you? You’re really pale.”

 

_ She always slept better with a friend at her back.  _ “Please,” she told him. 

 

He picked her up gently, as though she was something precious, and wrapped her in his coat. It was soft wool, and warm, and smelled like him. From there he carried her to the bridge and took his chair at the controls. Stars and clouds whizzed by overhead, endless and beautiful. 

 

“Thank you,” Natasha whispered as Steve curved her into him, tucking her face into the shadow of his jaw. “Thank you for coming to get me.”

 

“Natasha,” he told her, voice rumbling and grave. “I always will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hugs to you all! We BuckyNat, SteveNat, and WinterWidowShield shippers have to stick together in this, our hour of adversity. 
> 
> (ALSO BUCKY IS NOT DAMAGED FIGHT ME RUSSOS)
> 
> Next chapter we see Natasha in the Space Race, find out where the title of this story comes from, and get both BuckyNat and SteveNat softness!


	4. Redshift

_Once, Natalia had wanted to go to space. Once she had been Linda Cosgrove, girl computer._

 

“Oh come on, Linda!” said Deb, perched on the edge of her desk. NataliaLinda glanced at the girl fondly before tucking her work into the top-left drawer of her desk and locking it.

 

“You never come out with us,” Deb pouted.

 

“Ruth, are you going to the movies tonight?” NataliaLinda asked, twisting a strand of her long, brutally straight around her finger. Linda was a fidgeter; she was always in movement. She swung her foot while she worked on force and trajectory equations, she fiddled with pens during meetings, and she twirled her hair during conversations. (Inside, watching herself, Natalia knew that the fidgeting habit would take a few weeks to break.)

 

“No,” said Ruth, swinging her canvas tote over her arm and straightening her desk chair. “Henry’s parents are coming to town, and I need to get home and get Mary cleaned up and fed before dinner.”

 

“Oof,” NataliaLinda huffed, pulling a face. Ruth’s in-laws still didn’t approve of her coming back to work on the airbase after little Mary’s second birthday. “Are they staying long?”

 

“The weekend,” said Ruth. “So if I don’t show up Monday, assume that it’s because my home is the scene of a gory murder-suicide.” She smiled, but it was already pained.

 

“I’ll help bury the bodies,” said Natalia, leaning across the aisle to pat her friend’s arm.

 

“So?” asked Deb again. Deb had curled, medium-brown hair, freckles, and a surprising penchant for gossip considering that she could do a significant amount of complex physics in her head. She and Linda were the only two single women working as computers, and Deb was eager to earn her MRS. degree.

 

“I really don’t want to go out tonight,” said Natalia, honestly. To keep desk work from making her soft she pushed herself brutally in the evenings, and tonight was Friday: she had to get her weekly field report to the rendezvous point between now and tomorrow morning.

 

She clicked off her little desk fan and stood, the back of her linen jumper-dress sticking to her. Late April in coastal Florida was murderously warm. It was the worst part of this seemingly never-ending assignment. If she didn’t miss the sound of her native language and the coolness of early Russian mornings, she’d be content to stay at Cape Kennedy, working with other women as a team and learning about astrophysics… forever.

 

“Are you sure?” asked Deb, her eyes crinkling. “Because Russell has been looking for a chance to ask you out since New Years.”

 

“Then he should have already asked,” said Natalia as the three women stepped out into the hall.

 

“We done for the week?” called Donna from her private office.

 

“Yes ma’am,” said Natalia, ripping off a joking salute. “All tidied away.”

 

Donna walked over to their shared office and locked the door. She always managed to look so cool and put-together, even in the humidity of godforsaken Florida marshes. She’d been at her desk since eight, and still her lemon-yellow collared shirt was crisp against the deep brown of her skin.

 

“Good work this week,” she said, nodding at Linda and Ruth and Deb. “You know the HQ guys are still pushing for a July launch, and it isn’t our office that’s going to slow them down.”

 

“No ma’am,” said Ruth with a smirk. “Not us.”

 

“Alright,” said Donna, returning to her office to tidy her own things away. “Enjoy your weekend, ladies.”

 

“You too!” Deb called as they walked down the hall to the stairs.

 

The parking lot was an inferno; Natalia could feel the soles of her little flat shoes sticking to perpetually-tacky asphalt as she crossed to her Chevy.

 

“Last chance!” said Deb. “I can drive!”

 

Natalia just waved and slid onto the slightly-worn benchseat of her car. It was part of her cover, all of it was. Her little house on the outskirts of Courtenay, the cream-colored Chevy, the dresses, the name. She’d woken in the Chair in Volgograd more than a year ago with unearned knowledge of calculus and astrophysics and aerodynamics. From there she’d been flown to New York, and then to Florida. By the time she’d arrived she was Linda Cosgrove from Manhattan, a second-wave feminist, mathematician, and plant lady. Her parents were dead, but she had a brother back in New York.

 

It _felt_ real. But none of it was. Despite all that… Natalia was happy. She liked Linda, and Linda had a good life.

 

Automatically Natalia scanned the facade of her little yellow house as she turned in the drive. The curtains were open to the same point at which she’d left them, the yard needed a trim, and her azaleas needed water. The mail had come.

 

Her side door was open. The knob turned before Natalia twisted the key, and she knew, she _knew,_ she’d locked it this morning. She couldn’t quite remember how old she was anymore, but she knew she’d locked her house.

 

Natalia retreated to her car, popped the hood, and pulled out the pistol she’d kept taped inside the engine block. (Linda could get away with carrying a few knives concealed on her person, but she wouldn’t be able to lie her way out of carrying a weapon on a NASA base.)

 

Natalia made no noise as she pushed the door open and stepped barefoot into the kitchen. The ceiling fan was lazily turning in the tiny living room, and she could only hear the rattle of the refrigerator in the thick silence.

 

The utility pantry was empty. Gun first Natalia swept around the corner into the dining room, and from there had a clear line of sight down to the little living room.

 

The Soldier was sitting on her loveseat.

 

“Widow,” he said, tundra-cool.

 

“ _Soldat_ ,” she replied, not lowering her weapon. “I assume you're here with a message?”

 

It was either that or to kill her.

 

“Karpov needs the information,” he said, eyes still focused on her. “The Party needs you to succeed, Romanova. Our motherland is still nearly a year from a manned moon landing thanks to Komarov’s death.”

 

“They’re closer,” said Natalia. “We’re on to re-entry calculations.”

 

“We need specifications, Widow. It’s not like you to fail.”

 

“Have I failed?” she asked, raising one sleek eyebrow.

 

“Not yet,” said the Soldier.

 

“And I won’t.” Natalia finally lowered the gun. “Are you to stay with me?”

 

“Your cover included a brother. I am the brother; I was in an accident in a machining room and wear a glove to cover the damage. I will be with you until further orders are given. Sabotage may be necessary, and I am the most suited for destruction.”

 

Truer words were never spoken.

 

~~~

 

“I’ll wait for it to get dark,” she said, watching from the other side of her little kitchen table as the Soldier stared down at his piece of coffee cake.

 

“Why have you not infiltrated the records before now?” asked the Soldier, still looking at the crumbles scattered around his treat.

 

Natalia got up to switch on her radio, and then washed and dried her own dessert plate. “The more they trust me, the further I will be able to get when I look. I also will be able to verify the majority of the data firsthand.”

 

The Soldier nodded.

 

“Eat the cake,” said Natasha.

 

Mechanically the Soldier forked a bite and raised it to his lips. When the cinnamon and vanilla flavors hit his tongue Natalia watched his eyes go wide. She wasn’t sure how often they’d done this, now. She knew he had a sweet tooth. She knew that if he was left in a room with music and no superiors he’d start to sway to the beat. There were always pieces of the Soldier trying to reassert himself, just like there were pieces of Natalia that would occasionally swirl to the surface of her mind, knocked loose by a smell or sound or without any prompting at all.

 

Something mournful came on the radio, something with rolling guitar chords and a rasping, melancholy voice.

 

“Is it good?” she asked as he used his index finger to swipe up the last of the cinnamon crumbs.

 

“Better ‘n good,” he said, and then jolted. Natalia smiled sadly. It was terrible to be surprised by the contents of your own mind.

 

“It gets dark at about nine this time of year,” she said. “I’ll stay dressed like this, in work clothes. If someone catches me there I’ll say I forgot my wallet and didn’t want to wait until Monday to retrieve it.”

 

The Soldier nodded, but he didn’t seem to be focused on her anymore.

 

With nothing to do and the Soldier lost in his thoughts, Natalia decided to use her time wisely. She turned the radio up and pulled out her ironing board and starch spray. Linda had dresses that needed pressing for next week, and she was too tightly wound to try to watch the evening news.

 

Natalia hummed along as she ironed. She couldn’t sing, at least not well, but she liked music.

 

“Will you dance with me?” the Soldier asked abruptly.

 

Natalia set the iron on its base and looked over at the Soldier. He’d gotten up to wash his plate and fork, and now he was backlit by the low sun, glowing gold over the back-barrier marsh.

 

“I-”

 

“Please,” he said.

 

“Alright,” said Natalia. She unplugged the iron and pushed the board out of the way. “Do you know this song?” she asked as the Soldier put a hand on her waist and reeled her in.

 

“No,” he said. “But- I remember something like this. I think I remember.”

 

“Well,” said Natalia as they began to sway. “Have you seen yourself? I don’t think you’d have been wanting for partners.”

 

The Soldier blinked again, and Natalia wondered what he was remembering. “A blonde,” he said, eyes narrowed in concentration. “Even shorter than you.”

 

“Watch who you’re calling short,” said Natalia with a wink. There wasn’t any point in mourning the things they’d lost, not right now. At the moment she was standing in a little house she liked, in a pool of late-evening sun, dancing with a man more attractive than he had any right to be. This was a moment to be enjoyed.

 

“Hmm,” said the man, smiling. “I know what you’re capable of, Little Spider. Don’t worry.”

 

“I don’t,” she said, her voice still light.

 

The song changed, clicked over to something a little faster, a little bluesier. Natalia recognized it as Elvis. Without thinking about it both the Soldier and Natalia stood a little straighter and began to circle faster, hips swaying to the beat. When he spun her Natalia laughed, and when the Soldier smiled- oh, he had dimples. A weapon with crinkles at the corners of his eyes and dimples in his cheeks.

 

“Do I have a name?” he asked, dipping her back over his arm.

 

She didn’t startle. She was too well-trained for that. “No,” she said. “Not that I know of.”

 

“I feel like I have a name,” he said, brow furrowing.

 

“Most people do,” said Natalia, just for something to say.

 

“What do you call me?” he asked. Natalia realized they’d stopped dancing now, and the light was fading fast.

 

“Soldat,” she told him honestly.

 

“Oh.”

 

“What do you want to be called?”

 

“I don’t ...know,” he said. “But I have a name.”

 

“Aright,” she said easily. “Where have you been stationed recently?”

 

“They sent me here from Prague,” he said. “Before that- Vietnam? I think?”

 

It hadn’t escaped Natalia’s notice that this whole conversation had been in English. It also occurred to her that if the Soldier was remembering correctly, it had been at least a year since he’d been in the chair and seriously wiped.

 

“I’ve been here,” she said. “Almost two years, now. They had me run a couple smaller missions in DC and New York, but it always came back to this.”

 

“Do you like it?” asked the Soldier as the light continued to fade.

 

“I do,” said Natalia, very softly. (It couldn’t matter that she liked it.)

 

“Good,” said the Soldier.

 

Natalia moved away from him and dug a thigh holster out of the smallest of her kitchen drawers. It was already equipped with throwing knives. On the other leg went lock-picking tools.

 

“I trained you,” said the Soldier, abrupt again.

 

“Yes,” she said. “At least some. I remember that.”

 

“Oh,” he said. “ _Oh._ ”

 

“I have to go now,” said Natalia, before they could complete this stroll down memory lane.

 

“I’ll come with you,” said the Soldier.

 

Natalia thought about it. He was good on covert missions, and there was no reason to leave him here alone, confused by his memories. “Alright,” she said. “But I’m the lead.”

 

He nodded. The Soldier was in a white button-down shirt, a loose blue tie, and dark pants. He looked like any other middle-management man in an ill-fitting suit, even if his hair was overlong. Maybe she could tell people he was a hippy part-time.

 

~~~

 

It was an easy drive over the bridge to Cape Kennedy. The Soldier was quiet along the way, and they both seemed content to listen to surf rolling and gulls crying overhead.

 

“Evening, miss,” said the guard on the gate. “You forget something?”

 

Linda tugged on a strand of hair. “Hi John, I forgot my wallet. Got down to the grocery and didn’t have it on me! I’d wait until Monday, but I’ve got empty cupboards at home and a hungry brother to feed.”

 

She smiled at the gatesman.

 

The Soldier leaned over so he could look out the driver’s window. “I’m James,” he said, easy as anything. “I always used to tell her there wasn’t any damn point in calculating how fast a plane could fly if she couldn’t remember to eat, you know?”

 

“Lotta people on this base like that,” said John, smiling. “Geniuses who get tripped up trying to do laundry.”

 

Linda bobbed her head and smiled, bashful this time. “You’re so right,” she said. “That’s why we need people like the two of you.”

 

“Go on,” said John, stepping back and raising the entrance gate. “See you in a bit.”

 

“Thanks,” said Linda. “I appreciate it.”

 

The drove along the loop road for a few minutes before she glanced across the bench seat at the Soldier. “James?” she asked.

 

He shrugged. “He said he was John,  and it… felt right.”

 

“Okay,” she said, pulling into her usual lot. “James. This is my building. Flight specs, orbit calculations, supply, risk, weight ratios. Prototypes are in the building attached to this one. Across the plaza is the comms building, and further down the loop road is the hangar, launch pad, and test information.”

 

“Alright,” he said. “We don’t go in and smash anything tonight. Guy saw our faces. We’ll grab some information from your building and get out.”

 

Linda dug in the glove box and pulled out a little silvery square. “Camera,” she told the Sold- James. “And a penlight.”

 

“Let’s go,” he said.

 

She had a key to the outside door, they all did. It was a toss-up as to who would arrive in the mornings, and since it was a military installation the doors were technically supposed to be closed at all time.

 

“What is it you do?” asked James as Natalia picked the lock on Donna’s door. She’d bring her something nice on Monday. This was… _different_ when the target was someone you liked. It was a hell of a lot harder.

 

“I’m a computer,” she said. How did she explain it?

 

“I do mathematics,” she told him. “Math and physics. How much thrust does a twenty-two thousand pound rocket have to have to get off the ground? When it hits orbit, and the main propulsion stops, what’s its trajectory? In relation to the moon’s orbit, where will the rocket land as it approaches? Will the return journey bring them back into our atmosphere at the right angle for them to not be burned apart?”

 

James (and the name really did suit him) looked at her with his mouth slightly open. “You can do that?” he asked as she opened the door.

 

“Don’t look so surprised,” she told him. “I can still kill a man with my thighs.”

 

“Never doubted it for a minute, darlin’,” he told her.

 

It was the work of a second to photograph Donna’s progress reports to brass.

 

“What-all does this mean?” asked James.

 

“That the Americans have almost everything they need for a moonwalk,” said Natalia. “The math works.”

 

“You mentioned prototypes?”

 

They replaced the papers, relocked Donna’s door, and moved quickly down the hallway, to the stairs, and into the adjoining building.  “Prototypes or diagrams?” she asked.

 

“How long until the guard notices we haven’t come back?” he asked.

 

“It’s a loop road,” said Natalia, stopping outside one of the Lieutenant Commanders’ offices. “The exit is monitored by someone else, and it’s really only to make sure someone doesn’t drive in the wrong way.”

 

James looks flabbergasted. “Americans,” he said eventually, shaking his head as he stepped into the office after Natalia.

 

“Hey now,” she said, going to a filing cabinet. “I think you’re one.”

 

James looked thoughtful. “Maybe,” he said as she took more pictures. “I dream in English, most of the time.”

 

“Anything interesting?” she asked.

 

He shrugged.

 

“Film’s done,” she told him, putting away the files. “Let’s go.”

 

They were back in her building and almost to the door when Natalia stiffened. “Hide,” she said, shoving him into the restroom just before the exterior door opened.

 

“Linda?” someone called.

 

_Oh no. Not Deb._

 

“Linda, Frank dropped me off to pick up my car after the movie, and I saw yours in the lot. Are you- Oh there you are. Is everything okay?”

 

“Yeah,” said Natalia, flicking her hair. She was Linda again. Linda took her wallet out of her pocket and showed it to Deb. “Just needed to come back for this.”

 

“Did someone let you in?” asked Deb, looking from Natalia to the still-slowly closing bathroom door. “Because we lock the office.”

 

_Oh, smart girl. Could you be less observant tonight?_

 

“The night patrol has master keys,” said Natalia lightly, moving to put an arm around Deb’s shoulders and lead her back to the car. “We could-”

 

But Deb had never been content. Giggling, kind, and eager? Yes. Complacent? No, no.

 

She stuck her head into the men’s restroom and almost headbutted the Soldier, who grabbed her.

 

“You’re not a janitor,” she said flatly. “Linda, if this man is coercing you we can get him-”

 

They couldn’t fail this mission. They couldn’t fail, and Deb wouldn’t forget, and Linda wasn’t really… real. She was the Black Widow.

 

And the Black Widow always succeeds.

 

Natalia pulled Deb away from James, put her hands on either side of the girl’s skull, and heaved.

 

It was a move that had worked a hundred times before. It worked again.

 

“Get the car,” said Natalia flatly as Deb dropped between them. She fished in the girl’s skirt pocket for her keys. “Black Ford. Probably right outside.”

 

He didn’t say anything. Natalia didn’t look him in the eyes.

 

“I’m sorry, sweet girl,” she whispered, closing Deb’s eyes for her. If only apologies could make a difference.

 

~~~

 

They took the body and the car into the interior swamplands. It was a long drive, and silent. By the time they got back to Natalia’s house the sun was beginning to come up.

 

“I’m sorry,” said James as they stepped into her bedroom.

 

She flipped on the window air conditioner she’d saved for, and closed the bedroom door behind them.

 

“You liked her,” he said.

 

She had. For the first and only time in Natalia’s memory, she’d had real friends. “She jeopardized the mission,” said Natalia flatly.

 

There was nothing he could say to that.

 

“I’m going to shower,” said Natalia. “You’re welcome to sleep on the bed with me.”

 

His brow furrowed. “Have we- before?”

 

“I can remember it once,” she said. The Red Room and Department X had no reason to implant those memories, so likely they were real. “It’s up to you.”

 

Her shower was cool, and over too quickly. She didn’t bother to blow her hair dry. Instead Natalia slipped into shorts and chemise top and returned to the shadowy, slightly cooler-gloom of the bedroom and lay down next to James. He was down to his boxers and undershirt.

 

A dog barked down the street. The air conditioner hummed. Neither of them slept.

 

“Have you ever wanted to stop?” Natalia asked, whispering into the silence.

 

James’ head snapped towards her. “Don’t talk like that,” he said.

 

_She was so tired._

 

“Why?” she asked, a belligerent trainee again.

 

“Because they’ll wipe you. Or kill you.”

 

“Aright,” said Natalia.

 

“No,” said the Soldier. “No,” said James. “We don’t die.”

 

“We don’t?” She turned her head to meet his those cool grey eyes.

 

“No,” he said. “We’ve been fighting too long to live.”

 

She turned her head back to the slightly yellowed plaster of the ceiling. “There’s… there’s this phenomenon,” she said slowly. “As stars, or galaxies or whatever… as they move away from Earth, from home, the light waves that they emit become less and less frequent. It moves to the red-light end of the spectrum. Redshift.

 

“So as someone watches, the star gets more and more red. I feel like that, James. Drifting away, with everything getting redder as I go.”

 

* * *

 

 

_Once upon a time, she’d told him something true:_

 

Steve cast such huge shadows on the wall.

 

After the base in Austria they’d stayed in the Paris safehouse for two days. Two long days of tense looks and French news cycles while Natasha tried with increasing desperation to get her body totally back under her control.

 

They’d only left when she could walk steadily without help, her body still valiantly breaking down the poison that likely should have stopped her heart. She was still tired, and her head still ached in a fuzzy, distracting way, but they’d needed to leave the more populous area behind. She had plenty of stolen data to comb through, she had messages to send, and Steve would probably hold her down and sit on her if she asked to do anything more strenuous.

 

So they’d come here, to this cabin at what felt like the end of the world. The generator still ran the well-pump and the hot water heater, and kerosene lanterns gave the smooth walls a honey-toned glow. They also backlit Steve as he heated up the supplies they’d picked up after the border crossing into Bavaria, casting a smooth-edged shadow over Natasha where she perched on the slightly musty couch.

 

“Spam and eggs,” he told her with a twisted little smirk, passing her a paper plate.

 

“Gourmet,” she murmured, resolving to force herself to eat while it was hot.

 

“You wanna cook next time Romanov?” was Steve’s reply, but there was no heat in it. They sat side-by-side on the swaybacked couch and listened to crickets chirping and loons calling over the lake.

 

“Thanks,” said Natasha after she tossed her empty plate and poured water out of a gallon jug. “Just- thanks for everything, Steve.”

 

He was looking at her intently, and there really was no other experience quite like being sized up by Steve Rogers. Natasha was used to living among people who automatically assessed everyone they met for threat level, but with Steve… it wasn’t just about hidden weapons and hand-to-hand skills. He looked at you like he could read your motivations on your face and pull your secrets right out of your eyes.

 

“You’d do the same for me,” he said eventually. “You already have.”

 

( _Would you trust me to save you? I would now.)_

 

It was terrifying. She’d always liked him for it.

 

Natasha sprawled out on the floor in front of the dark fireplace. “You okay?” Steve asked, shuffling around something in the kitchenette.

 

“Yeah,” she said, feeling knots of tension between her shoulder blades relaxing painfully. “Just stiff. Been doing a lot of sitting on my ass.”

 

“Doing a lot of recovering,” said Steve, moving in front of the light again.

 

Natasha huffed her reply.

 

“There’s a record player here,” said Steve. “You care if I…?”

 

“Knock yourself out,” said Natasha, slowly tensing and then relaxing each major muscle group one by one, still flat out on the floor.

 

Soon enough she heard the telltale crackle of a record spinning, and then Nat King Cole’s voice was crooning away.

 

“What’d you find?” asked Natasha. The floors creaked as Steve moved to her and sat down on the floor, too.

 

“Greatest hits of the Fifties,” he  told her.

 

“Hmm.”

 

Nat King Cole faded into Johnny Cash, and Nat felt Steve stretch out on the floor beside her.

 

“Feels good,” he murmured.

 

It did. The loons had gone quiet but something rustled out in the trees. Natasha could feel the warmth radiating off Steve’s skin, and neither of them were critically wounded. They were full, and as free as they ever were.

 

And then Steve sucked in a long, slow breath through his nose and Natasha knew he was gearing up to say something to her, something that carried weight.

 

“I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” he said, voice low and deliberate. “I just- you told me. Back in the Tower, with the Accords. You told me staying together was more important than how we did it. You were the only one with the right motivations. I realize that now.”

 

Natasha shifted minutely, still looking up at the wooden ceiling of the cabin. (It was amazing how the human mind could see a face looking out of knot-holes and water stains.)

 

“I- I didn’t like the Accords either,” she said slowly, remembering that day. “I don’t think they’re safe for anyone. But I guess, you know. Regimes fall all the time, and so do agencies and treaties. I guess, in my head… all we had to do was outlast them.”

 

Now she could feel his eyes on her. “That’s always been your move, hasn’t it?” he asked quietly. “To outlast, outsurvive.”

 

She nodded.

 

“I should have listened to you,” he said, quieter now. “But- I’d spent so much time looking for Bucky, and then there he was, and the whole goddamn world was gunning for him, and-”

 

Natasha realized she was holding her breath.

 

“-and I promised I’d be with him until the end of the line,” said Steve, half to himself.

 

“I know,” said Natasha. “And you were right about that. He didn’t attack the embassy. He hadn’t attacked anyone for a while.”

 

“That doesn’t mean I’m not sorry.”

 

He’d rolled onto his side now, a mountainous curve of bone and muscle in the periphery of her vision.

 

“You don’t have to be sorry, Rogers,” she said. “I chose this. Back in the airport, I… chose this.”

 

He didn’t say anything. Instead he reached across the small stretch of floor between them and took her hand in his, resting their entwined fingers on her belly.

 

“Do you remember, back in Wilson’s house… remember when I asked if you’d trust me to save you?”

 

“I do,” said Steve, answering both questions with two little words.

 

Natasha turned her face to finally look at him. “I know,” she said, mapping those blue eyes and ridiculous eyelashes and high, pioneer cheekbones. “And you did. In that airport, you and Barnes came running around the corner and saw me and stopped. You didn’t engage automatically Steve, and you trusted me to keep T’Challa off of you long enough for you to get free.

 

“I made my choice. It’s okay.”

 

His fingers tightened on hers. “I don’t- I don’t know how you do it,” he said, voice rough. Elvis was crooning in the background now, and the night had gotten cool.

 

“You keep starting over, you keep- keep moving. And trying.”

 

She could give him this, now. Some secrets hurt more than others to keep.

 

“Clint- Clint was sent to kill me. I gave him a fight, but my heart wasn’t in it, and I think he knew that. I’d been out on my own from the KGB with my conditioning unraveling and a long, red wake of bodies on my trail. They were Russian operatives, but SHIELD didn’t care. I didn’t care. I felt… dirty. And tired. And I was looking down the shaft of one of Clint’s arrows and he offered me a job.”

 

Steve was inching across the floor to her now, trying to pull her into him or himself into her. It didn’t matter which: they’d collide like continents, changing both their landscapes forever.

 

“Natasha,” he said, low and aching.

 

“No- let me finish,” she said, feeling herself beginning to slide into Steve.

 

“I… have lived on a leash my entire life. In the Red Room we slept in handcuffs, Steve. I had trigger phrases in my head, and orders, and all of that tied me to the KBG more tightly than any belief system. And then Clint told me that SHIELD could give me a place to belong and use my skills for something good. Second chance isn’t a big enough term to describe what he gave me.”

 

Steve was wrapped around her now, holding her warm and close on all sides. It made this confession better, and somehow worse. (He might not be able to see her face, but he could feel her long, shuddering breaths.)

 

“I wasn’t under any delusions about being free at SHIELD. I was still a foreign operative, I was still only useful to SHIELD as a ...tool. All those obligations, and debts, they were a pretty strong leash too. And being on a leash, being a tool, it means you don’t have a lot of choices. You can choose refuse and die, but somehow…”

 

“You aren’t a tool. You’re a _person,_ Nat. _”_

 

“I’m both,” said Natasha gently. (Oh, Steve. He still thought she was a person.) “And then SHIELD turned out to be Hydra, and I burned it all down. Put it all out in the open. I _chose that,_ Steve. It was me, not an order. But that left me caught between the two, because one way or another I’d been working for Hydra for something like sixty years. And that- that almost broke me, Steve.”

 

“You didn’t know,” he said, tightening his arms around her.

 

“I should have,” she said. “Information is what I deal in.” (Information and death.) “I was- I still had that leash, and it was flapping loose in the wind with me. But then… I realized a leash is a tether, Steve. It’s an anchor. And I’ve been tied to you since you launched me off your shield in New York.

 

“So… I think that’s why I can start over again. I’m following Steve Rogers into battle, and I don’t have doubts anymore. This is the right thing to do. Both of us. However this plays out, I think that this time I’ll have done the right thing. I’ll have done the right thing _with you,_ and I chose it. I chose you.”

 

Steve was shuddering against her, and the shadow of her neck was wet and hot where he’d pressed his face. It was a gift, these tears for her. Who else had cried? Who else thought she deserved it?

 

“Can I kiss you?” he asked, his hands already on her hips and rolling her towards him.

 

“You want to?” she asked. She hadn’t escaped tears either, though mostly she’d kept them from falling. They were both red-eyed and damp, and Steve still looked beautiful.

 

“Natasha,” said Steve, a tiny smile quirking the corner of that too-perfect mouth. “I have wanted to kiss your properly since you stuck your tongue in my mouth in that shopping mall.”

 

“Well, it wasn’t that _im_ proper,” said Natasha as Steve slid his bicep under her head, propping her up and pulling her in closer.

 

“You ambushed me,” he said, his face so close to hers that his breath feathered over her cheeks. “I wasn’t ready.”

 

“You should always be ready-” she said, and then he kissed her.

 

It wasn’t a comfortable sort of kiss. They both had to crane their necks to get the right angle, and there were too many emotional undercurrents waiting to suck them both down. That said, it was one of the best kisses that Natasha could remember, because possibly for the very first time, both she and her kissing partner were on the same page: this kiss was about comfort. They were friends who loved each other.

 

He saw her as a person, as more than the perfect weapon, as more than the sum of her parts.

 

She saw him as more than a national icon, as more than a man displaced from his own time.

 

Together, they were something different again: stronger, better, more honest.

 

And so they lay there, on the hard floor of a small cabin in Bavaria, as around them the world shifted again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a big nerd, what can I say. 
> 
> Thank you so much for the support you've shown this story! I really means so much. Next chapter we finally get Nat, Steve, and Bucky in the same room!!


	5. a triangle is the strongest shape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this world, James and Steve and Natasha only get one perfect night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((this chapter makes me so nervous ahhhh))

_ Once upon a time, the sleeping beauty woke up whole.  _

 

“Bucky’s awake.”

 

“What?” Natasha looked up from her laptop to see him looking down at the Wakandan tech King T’Challa had given him. 

 

“Shuri just called me. Bucky’s awake, and he didn’t respond to the triggers she tested him with. It’s- he’s okay.”

 

“That’s good,” said Natasha, her stomach clenching. She knew this day would come. 

 

“We should-” Steve looked around their little safe house, this one in Budapest. (Fuck Budapest. Natasha should never have come back here.) “We should clean up and get to the jet.”

 

Natasha took a deep breath and closed her laptop. She’d known this fight was coming, but oh- it had been so good while it lasted. 

 

“I’ll hold down the fort here,” she said. “You go check on Barnes.”

 

Steve’s brow furrowed. “T’Challa forgave you for the airport. You can come with me; he won’t turn you away.”

 

“Don’t you think Barnes would be more comfortable adjusting again with you around?” she said. (It was so easy to answer a question with a question, to deflect and walk away. Except this time… it wasn’t.)

 

“No,” said Steve. “The palace and labs are enormous. We wouldn’t be locking him in a bunker with you.”  Then Steve’s face fell. “Oh,” he said softly. “He shot you, didn't he. Twice. Well, I can ask if you could stay-”

 

“Steve,” said Natasha firmly. Once she’d have been able to let him think that Barnes trying to kill her was the root of their issue, but now… she couldn’t. Not to Steve. “It’s not Barnes’ fault he tried to kill me. He shot you too, you know.”

 

“Yeah,” said Steve. “If it’s not that- then why, Nat?”

 

Godammit. He was giving her the ‘America’s Favorite Golden Retriever’ eyes. 

 

“I need to tell you something,” she said, slowly. Natasha turned away, blindly looking out at the alley behind their little flat. “And you’re probably going to be mad at me for it.”

 

He pulled the chair out across from her and sat down. “What is it?”

 

(She’d never had parents to tell her that she’d disappointed them. That was okay, because now she had Steve Rogers to do that for them.)

 

“I think- no, I’m pretty sure- that I knew Barnes. Before. In the Red Room. I’m pretty sure he trained me.”

 

_ Rip the bandaid off, Natalia.  _

 

“And- as adults. I think we were… involved.”

 

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” asked Steve. “It’s been- what, three years since D.C.?”

 

“I honestly didn’t know then,” said Natasha. “When I told you about the Winter Soldier, and him being a ghost story. I didn’t know it was the man who’d trained me, and I didn’t know he was your Bucky.”

 

“And after?”

 

“I recognized him from Odessa, and after he thumped my head against that table… more came back.”

 

“There’s really something to that cognitive recalibration, huh,” said Steve, Sahara dry.

 

“Do you know how many times I had my memories tampered with Rogers? Because I don’t.” She didn’t need to tell him that her SHIELD brain scans showed permanent, physical damage. He’d either believe her, or he wouldn’t. 

 

“When did you start to remember him more?”

 

“I’ve always had… dreams. Usually they’re these sad, pale eyes over me. Not bad dreams, usually. Just there, over and over. Or flashes of a metal hand, but I thought-

 

“I remember dancing with the Imperial Ballet,” said Natasha abruptly. “I know I can’t have. I can’t have been raised in the Red Room and as a prima ballerina. But I remember them both. They feel equally real to me. I just- I have to look forward. If I look too far back I get lost.”

 

Steve still looked hurt, but he reached across the table and caught Natasha’s hand in his own. “Okay,” he said.  “And for the record? I’m glad you killed them, Nat. They shouldn’t have done that to you, or Bucky, or anyone.”

 

“Thanks, Steve,” said Natasha, glancing at him. 

 

“What- what memories do you have?” he asked quietly. 

 

“I remember- fighting him,” she admitted. “It was my test before I graduated the Red Room. And he taught me English. James is the reason I can speak without an accent.”

 

“James?”

 

Natasha nodded. “And there was this -house. A yellow house. We lived there, maybe. I remember ironing, and laying in bed with him while an air conditioner rattled.”

 

Steve’s brow furrowed. “Is that a real one?”

 

She jerked her hand away. “I don’t  _ know, _ Steve. You asked, and I told you.”

 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He hurried around the table and crouched by her chair. 

 

“Nat. Natasha- are you afraid you’ll remember more? Or that he’ll remember you? Or that you’ll, what? Hurt him?”

 

Natasha shrugged. She feared all of those things to varying degrees. 

 

“Did you love him?” Steve asked quietly. 

 

Trust Steve to know what really scared her. “I think I did,” she said. 

 

“Okay.” Steve stayed crouched by her chair. “Do you really not want to come to Wakanda? Or did you not want to tell me?”

 

“Both,” said Natasha. But she was the Black Widow, and the First of the Red Room, and she did the things that scared her. “But I can be ready to go in an hour.”

 

Steve searched her face. “Alright,” he said slowly. “But- give yourself time, okay?”

 

“He might not remember me,” said Natasha, her voice even. 

 

“Or maybe he will,” said Steve.

 

She didn’t know which would be worse.  

 

~~~

 

The last of the sunlight was fading quickly, honey-warm and golden behind the tangles of the Wakandan jungle. Small braziers had been lit an hour ago, and their crackling, flickering lights were warm and reassuring. 

 

Bucky was awake. Bucky was whole. And Bucky  _ remembered.  _

 

The initial rush of adrenaline had waned, but Steve still couldn’t make himself stop touching his oldest friend. They were sprawled back on a gorgeously carved wood and upholstered couch outside Steve’s rooms in the Wakandan palace. They’d been there for most of the afternoon, catching up on what had happened since Siberia and the Accords or just sitting in silence, content to have a day to themselves in the sun. 

 

Steve wondered if Bucky would freckle. He used to, when they were kids. 

 

Bucky shifted, and Steve raised his arm off Bucky’s shoulders, letting him settle more firmly against Steve’s side. Maybe it was because darkness was creeping in, making them both brave, or maybe- maybe because they’d waited so long for this and had fought so hard that it didn’t matter anymore.  

 

Once, when Natasha had been flirting with Bruce and Bruce had still been flirting back ( _ ugh _ ), Steve had told the scientist that he shouldn’t wait. That Steve Rogers had waited too long, missed his shot, and had to spend the rest of his life regretting it. It had been a hundred percent true, only everyone had  _ assumed  _ that Steve had been talking about Peggy. And yeah, he kind of had been, but mostly he’d meant one James Buchanan Barnes. 

 

“You remember that night we got back to camp- after Austria?” 

 

“Yeah,” said Bucky. “That’s one memory I don’t wanna forget.”

 

“I got my ass chewed out by Colonel Phillips for conducting an unsanctioned mission behind enemy lines.”

 

“Yeah, and then you got in even more trouble with Carter.  _ You were late, _ she said, and then kissed you so hard I thought you might suffocate.”

 

Steve could feel the smile in Bucky’s voice. 

 

“You know as well as I do that I can hold my breath for five minutes at a time, now,” said Steve. 

 

“Yeah,” said Bucky, voice all fond. “I know.”

 

“It was- you know, the tent.”

 

They’d never talked about this out loud, but Steve was tired of waiting. So goddamn tired of hoping, and being patient, and waiting for the perfect time. So he’d push through the blushes because this was Bucky, and not a single person was guaranteed to have a tomorrow.

 

“They gave me a shot of penicillin,” said Bucky. “And an aspirin, and turned me over to you. Probably didn’t need the penicillin,” he added as an afterthought. “Seeing as how I apparently had already been given the serum.”

 

“Yeah,” said Steve, swallowing down anger. “It was our first chance to just… be, after I’d had the serum. I was different, and for the first time I guess it felt like I could help you out, be the one to take care of you.”

 

“Steve,” said Bucky, gentle, turning so he could look Steve in the face. “It isn’t about- owing. Taking care of me. I don’t want that.”

 

“I know,” said Steve, smoothing his hand down Bucky’s back. “That’s not what I meant. Ah-” It took him a second to get back into the story. “We went back to my quarters, around back from where Colonel Phillip’s HQ was set up.”

 

“We washed up,” said Bucky. “And I kept asking what the hell had happened to you.”

 

“Yeah,” said Steve. “First thing you wanted to check was to see if I still had that scar from falling into Mrs. Greco’s fence.”

 

“You  _ didn’t,”  _ said Bucky, and he sounded offended all over again. 

 

“Got a few new ones, now,” said Steve, quietly. “Anyway, we- you know, put the bedroll down for you, and…”

 

“And you got in bed with me. Same way I’d always done with you in the winter, after your mam died.”

 

“Or when you’d come home after a girl,” said Steve, remembering the smell of whiskey and second-hand perfume that would cling to Bucky like fog. 

 

“Yeah.” Bucky sounded fond again. 

 

“You told me you wanted to see if Little Steve grew in proportion to the rest of me,” said Steve. 

 

“Look, it was the first thing anyone who saw you was gonna think,” said Bucky. Even in the shadows of the night Steve could see Bucky’s grin, the one with the dimples. 

 

“No, you were just a pervert,” said Steve, smacking Bucky’s ribs. “I’m trying to tell you something here, behave.”

 

“You sure? Cause it’s been a while since I’ve seen Little Steve.”

 

Steve groaned. “I said I wanted to take care of you first, and I -hadn’t before. I’d always let you initiate.”

 

Bucky nodded, listening. 

 

“Dugan saw us. That night. He’d come around, probably to tell me it was my watch, and he saw us. I made eye contact. And he kinda, you know, brushed his fingers to the edge of his helmet and never said anything about it.”

 

“Steve-” That one word, and it carried everything, a lifetime of history. “You should have said something to me.”

 

Bucky had known. He’d always known. Steve had spent his entire goddamn life angry because the hits just kept coming. Stevie’d been born with a bad heart and bad lungs and everyone, especially him, had known that one winter he’d get sick and wouldn’t live to see the spring. It had been senseless, and pointless, and inevitable. 

 

And then- then there’d been the time with the gin, on the roof, and Steve had realized that he might not be a full-on queer, but he certainly wasn’t normal. And more than that, he couldn’t tell anybody. He didn’t have any space to figure anything out; neither of them did.

 

So Bucky had followed Steve’s lead and they hadn’t ever talked about it. They’d (okay, we’ll Bucky had) dated women, and acted normal, and kept each other in their sights. 

 

“That’s the thing, Bucky,” said Steve quietly. “I didn’t care. I’d gotten you back, and it just- didn’t matter. I didn’t care who knew. It was the middle of the war, we were probably going to die. And then the war never stopped, Buck.”

 

“What’re you saying, Steve?” asked Bucky.

 

“I’m just- Christ, Buck. Pretty sure I’m trying to tell you that I realized I loved you when Dugan saw me with your cock in my mouth.”

 

Bucky’s (lush, damp) mouth dropped open. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he said. 

 

Steve  _ felt  _ his face flush red. “Romantically,” he spluttered. “I’ve loved you just- in general- since you showed me how to throw a punch without breaking my thumb again.”

 

Bucky snapped his mouth shut, curved over Steve’s chest, and  _ howled  _ with laughter. 

 

“You absolute idiot,” he said. “You idiot. Only you could fuck up a declaration of love that bad.”

 

“I don’t have a lot of practice with this, you jerk,” said Steve, sliding his hand up to cup the back of Bucky’s neck. 

 

“Well that’s a relief,” said Bucky. “It figures that you’d have a decade in New York without me and  _ still  _ not manage to catch a date.”

 

It shouldn’t have been possible. It shouldn’t. But somehow Steve managed to blush even harder, and probably ships in the Indian Ocean could use his head as a navigational beacon. 

 

“You  _ did,”  _ said Bucky, his eyes gleeful. “You dog.”

 

“I-” 

 

Steve panicked and dragged Bucky’s face to his. Considering that it was their first kiss since 1945, probably he shouldn’t have made the kiss into a  _ please for the love of god shut up  _ move. At the same time, it was one of the most Steven Grant Rogers moves possible. 

 

Bucky’s lips were a little bit chapped, but warm and soft and familiar under Steve’s. “You’re an idiot, but I love you too,” he mumbled, and yeah: that was familiar too. 

 

~~~

 

The ceramic mug was heavy and warm between Natasha’s fingers. The Wakandan tea was rich and dark here, whispering of warm, expensive things in the deep. Maybe it was the soil, fresh and volcanic and filled with the most precious metal on earth. 

 

Natasha concentrated on her mug of tea, because if she didn’t she’d need to move. She’d need to put on her leggings and go for a run or pick a fight because she was here, and James was here, and he’d either remember her or he wouldn’t. This was a situation firmly outside of her control, but she wanted to be here for Steve, whenever he came back. She owed him that. 

 

She was curled into the corner of a deep sectional sofa, her tea long gone, when the door rattled. 

 

“How’d-”

 

Steve wasn’t the one coming through the door. Barnes-  _ James-  _ was standing in the entryway, those pale grey eyes focused on her once more. 

 

“Natalia,” he said, voice low. James swallowed hard, but didn’t move. “Do you- I’m sorry about Odessa. And DC. I couldn’t- I didn’t remember then.”

 

“I know,” said Natasha, and cleared her throat. That breathy, high voice wasn’t  _ hers.  _ She was the Black Widow. She stood, feeling strangely vulnerable while curled into the soft cushions. “It’s okay.”

 

Steve was hovering in the doorway behind James. “I’ll go,” he said quietly. 

 

“No,” said Natasha. This was so unfair to Steve, who’d just gotten his best friend and lover back. (He hadn’t told her. He hadn’t needed to. She’d ‘accidentally’ run him into the 2016 Pride parade, and the conversation that resulted had told her everything she’d needed to know.) “No, Steve. I’m okay if you stay. If- James wants you to.”

 

James turned around, grabbed Steve’s hand, and tugged him fully into the room.

 

_ He moved the same way.  _ Even with one arm he still swayed a little, the swagger that Natalia had taunted him for a long time ago. 

 

_ “You’re too recognizable,” she teased, swaying her shoulders as she mockingly walked towards him. “I’d recognize you anywhere, moving like this. You have to be straight up and down, normal.” _

 

_ “Metal arm makes it kind of hard to blend in, ‘Tashenka,” said the Soldier. His eyes were light, the shadows temporarily chased away.  _

 

_ She walked with his swagger again. “The arm can be hidden. Your walk can’t, and it says “Hello, I am here to murder you.” _

 

_ “I usually am,” he said, a dimple winking over a smothered smile.  _

 

_ “So?” asked Natalia, dropping into his lap. “Don’t advertise it.” _

 

When she snapped back the present James was in front of her, focused on her face. 

 

“What did you remember?” he asked. 

 

Of course he’d understand that, the way flashbacks could feel so immediate and real. Her first few months outside the KGB had been full of them, the barrier between her implanted memories and everything else crumbling down like the Berlin Wall. 

 

“I- making fun of you. I don’t know where we were- just some room. But I made fun of your murder swagger; I told you it was too recognizable.”

 

Steve choked on a laugh from somewhere to her right. “He’s been walking like that since way before the war, Nat,” he said. “It was a like a calling card. He’d go wandering down the sidewalk to get some smokes and come back with a girl on each arm.”

 

“One of ‘em was usually for you,” said James, his eyes not leaving Natasha’s face. 

 

“Yeah,” said Steve. “Look, are you sure you want me here? I can-”

 

“Stay,” said Natasha and James together. 

 

“Steve... I’m not keeping secrets from you,” said Natasha eventually. She turned and found him sitting in an armchair caddy-corner to the sofa, with his shoulders tense and his elbows resting on his knees. “So it’s probably easier this way. But if you want to leave-”

 

“No,” said Steve, his head snapping up. “I’ve just- you’re too important to me. Both of you.”

 

It felt like a declaration. Trust Steve to be the brave one; to have more than enough love to give. 

 

“Okay,” said Natasha quietly, glancing up at James. Her palms were damp and her heart was thundering in her chest. She felt like a recruit all over again, standing in front of the Winter Soldier and preparing to fight for her life. 

 

But she’d already done that. 

 

And he wasn’t the Winter Soldier. 

 

“Tashenka…” His hand fluttered at his side, like he wanted to reach out but was afraid to touch her. “They told me you died. I kept asking for you, and they’d told me you died. That I hadn’t protected you.”

 

“They told me the same thing,” said Natasha. “That you’d died, and I- I defected after that.”

 

“I’m glad,” said James, voice low and intense. “I’m glad you left. I’m glad you got away.”

 

“I wish I’d known,” said Natasha. She was calm and dry-eyed and discussing one of the greatest regrets of her life. “If I’d known-”

 

“If you’d tried- if  _ we’d  _ tried- they would have killed us both,” said James. This time he did reach out and take her hand in his. “We both survived. That’s what matters.”

 

“I am the Black Widow,” Natasha whispered in Russian. “And not even death can take that from me.”

 

James nodded and pressed his forehead to hers. “We did it,” he whispered, the formality falling away and leaving the Brooklyn behind. “We beat them at their own game. We out-survived them,  _ malen'kiy pauk.  _ And you’re right: nobody can take that from us.”

 

Eventually they found themselves curled into the sofa again, her on one end and James on the other. She wasn’t quite ready to be touched yet. Natasha felt brittle and old; vulnerable here, caught in the middle of a collision between her past and present, between regrets and half-formed dreams. 

 

They sat together in a heavy silence. Talking about the past was- Natasha wasn’t ready for that yet, and she wasn’t sure the men were, either. It was such a source of pain, and the small moments that they’d hoarded for themselves had been kept close and private for so long. However much time it had been, it hadn’t been enough to close over some of these wounds. 

 

As for the future: it seemed like some delicate, half-imagined thing, like trying to trap it with words and wishes would guarantee its demise. 

 

So they sat quietly until Natasha broke the silence (the only way out was through). “Tell me something true,” she said.

 

Steve glanced at her, then looked back down at his hands. “I’m afraid of being selfish,” he said. “Because I have history with both of you, and I remember all of it. I feel like I already have so much, but I want more. So if you need me to give you two space- to. Whatever. I will. You deserve it.”

 

“Steve,” said Natasha, the word falling from her lips like she’d been gut-punched. She was out of her nest and across the short expanse of floor in a second, and when Steve pulled her into his lap she tucked herself into the safe, Steve-smelling shadows under his jaw. (She wanted to sit like this with her  _ soldat,  _ but she wasn’t sure either of them were ready just yet. Soon, though. Soon.)

 

“We’re in this together,” she said. “We’re family.”

 

“Family,” James repeated, tilting his head to the side as he watched Steve’s hand tracing up and down Natasha’s back. 

 

“You know, a triangle is the strongest shape,” mumbled Natasha. 

 

“Yeah?” 

 

“Basic geometry,” said Natasha, taking long, even breaths. 

 

“And architecture,” said James from the couch. “What? You’re not the only nerd, Romanova.”

 

Natasha grinned at him, and bumped the bridge of her nose against Steve’s jaw. “We’re a set, aren’t we,” she said. 

 

James nodded, but didn’t grin back. “I want to tell you something true. I’m  _ going  _ to be selfish. I don’t deserve either of you, shouldn’t get to touch you with these hands- hand,” he amended. “But I want to.”

 

“I want you too,” Natasha murmured at the same time that Steve said, “Don’t talk about yourself like that, Buck.”

 

James shrugged

 

“Here’s something else that’s true,” said Steve. Natasha tightened her fingers around the handful of Steve’s shirt she’d been gripping. 

 

He tilted his head back, looking up at the ceiling, and Natasha idly identified this as a way to distance himself from both of them; to keep from having to see their reactions. Whatever this was, it was going to hurt. (It always did. And she’d take whatever pain these men gave her.)

 

“I- Christ. Everyone has heard about how fucking patriotic I was, right? I wanted to join up to fight for America so badly I went to a dozen different recruiting offices and agreed to be experimented on. Right?”

 

Natasha huffed a laugh at James’ disbelieving noise. 

 

“But that wasn’t it,” said Steve.

 

“No shit,” was James’ muttered reponse. 

 

Steve shifted, and Natasha moved with him, not willing to give up her seat. 

 

“Buck you- you and I never talked about it, but-”

 

“What, that you realized in 1930 that you were going to die young? Probably hurting? And that fact pissed you off more than your shrimpy body could contain?”

 

All the air whooshed out from Steve, ruffling the fine hairs at Natasha’s templed. “Yeah,” he said. “Basically. So I figured if I died picking a fight over some girl’s virtue, or being experimented on to go fight in the war, it would… I don’t know, it would mean something. And it would be quick.”

 

“Yeah? How quick did seventy years in the ice go, pal?” asked James, and there was such an edge of hurt to the words that Natasha wanted to be able to touch him too. 

 

“Steve,” she said, tugging on the hair at the nape of his neck. “Go sit by James.”

 

“What?”

 

“Do what the lady said,” said Bucky, jerking his head in a blatant ‘get over here’ gesture. 

 

Steve lifted Natasha easily, and she was a little surprised to find he didn’t put her down. When he sat hip to hip with James he still didn’t let her go; only tightened his arms around her and dropped a kiss to the top of her head. 

 

“C’mere, you ass,” mumbled James, and then he and Steve were kissing  _ right there over Natasha’s head.  _

 

The last of her nerves frayed away. Whatever truth she decided to give the two of them, it would pale in comparison to what they were showing her now.

 

“Mmm,” she purred when James eventually let Steve pulled away, looking flushed and dazed and delectable. 

 

“I got more,” said James, licking his lips and smirking at Natasha’s reaction. 

 

“Yeah?” she asked. 

 

His hand was warm and reassuring on the back of her neck, his lips were soft on hers, and the little gasp Steve let out only made Natasha smile against James’ mouth.  _ JamesandSteve _ , together like this, tasted like wonder. 

 

“Wow,” Steve mumbled. Natasha tucked herself back against him, but put her feet in James’ lap. Almost absently, he wrapped his hand around the joint of her ankle. 

 

“I have a truth,” said Natasha quietly. 

 

Steve’s hands tightened on her. 

 

“I… want to be a person,” she said quietly. That was the truth, naked and unadorned. “When I was with James- when I felt like I was slowly drifting away, he reminded me how to be a person. I felt like more of a person when I was with him.”

 

“You  _ are  _ a person,” said Steve, boa-constricting his arms even tighter. 

 

But James- his only reaction was to nod, a tiny sniper’s movement, and to brush his thumb against the bone of her ankle. He knew. 

 

“No,” said Natasha gently. “I wasn’t. James… he had a childhood, and loves, and goals and dreams before Department X ever got their hands on him. He knew he was real, under all the programming. It’s why they had to wipe him so much more often than me.”

 

Steve was rubbing his cheek against her hair now, and Natasha spared a moment to love him: this giant, compassionate man had been allowed to be so lonely for so long because everyone saw the legend and stars and stripes. Nobody saw the angry, displaced man beneath.  

 

“I think in terms of marks and missions. I keep secrets out of habit, and I spy on my friends like it’s okay. Or normal. I don’t get mad, because it’s pointless, I have to remind myself to want things-

 

“But I want you. You both make me feel like it’s real. It’s different with you. Better.”

 

Steve’s face was pressed to her hair, but James hadn’t looked away. He hadn’t taken his eyes from her when looking away would have been easier, or felt like an admission. 

 

“I was told- I believed- that I had no place in the world. So when I left… when Clint spared me- I made it my place to try to right my wrongs. To balance all the evils I’d done. Because I did them willingly, Steve. If you can’t  _ belong  _ anywhere, being useful, and being needed… it’s better than nothing.

 

“I guess- I hope- that I belong with you two. Both of you, at different points in my life. Maybe you two are my place in the world.”

 

Natasha drew in a long, shuddering breath and rested her head on Steve’s shoulder. He was still shuddering quietly, his hands gripping Natasha, but James (with those sad, grey eyes) leaned forward and tilted Natasha’s face to his.  “ _ Natashen’ka _ ,” he said gently. “You are a person. You are my impossible girl. And you belong anywhere you want. If that’s with the two of us, we won’t complain.”

 

She kissed him, soft and sweet, with none of the fear or pressing need that had colored their time together with the KGB. 

 

“He said it better than me,” said Steve, his voice thick. “But sweetheart- you’ve always been a person to me.”

 

“I know,” said Natasha, and then she kissed him too, just because he was Steve. He tasted like the ocean: like salt, and wide-open spaces, and the origin of life. 

 

“Jesus,” Steve mumbled, slumping over to rest his head against James’ chest. “That’s enough truths for one night.”

 

James made a face and absently started dragging his nails through Steve’s hair. That was a Bucky Barnes move through and through. The Soldier had never allowed himself that kind of idle motion when Natalia had known him. She hoped she’d have a chance to get to know this new version of the man who’d come through the other side of a cold and lonely hell. 

 

“James?” she asked quietly, looking up at his face. 

 

“I -shit.”

 

Steve pushed back up, his body tense again. “Bucky, what is it?”

 

“I-” He glanced out at the dark balcony before looking back at Steve. “I want to stay here for a while. Shuri told me that I could, and I thought about it before you got back. I’m… I’m not ready to be back in the world, Steve. Especially not traveling with you, because then people will figure it out, sure as anything. I’m still a fugitive, and I know both of you.” 

 

He smiled a little at this, grey eyes warming like the dawn. “Neither of you can stay away from a fight. I want- no, I need a chance to figure out who I’m gonna be before I’m back out in the world. I was serious when I said I didn’t want to kill people anymore.

 

“I spent most of the last seventy-odd years having all my choices taken from me. I want to make this one. It’s not forever. ‘Specially not with the two of you out there. Just a little while.”

 

Now it was Natasha’s turn to cry. He deserved this, but oh- Steve had found him only to watch him go into cryo, and now he was healthy and leaving him (them) again. 

 

“Alright,” said Steve. “We’ll stay, we can-”

 

“Steve,” said Natasha quietly. “I think he wants space from us, too. It’s hard to think when Captain America is looking at you like you’re the most beautiful thing in the world.”

 

James snuggled in closer to Steve. “Besides,” he said quietly. “You and Tasha have a mission. You’re out there mopping up what SHIELD couldn’t, and that’s important. Hydra always regroups, always bides their time. They’re vulnerable, now. You can finish it.”

 

Steve didn’t say anything. Instead he curled his torso towards James, who turned to meet him, and then Natasha was being held safe and warm between two broad chests. 

 

“Okay, Buck,” said Steve. “Whatever you need.”

 

“I need you to not get killed. You either,” he added, looking down at Natasha.

 

“We’ll do our best,” said Steve. 

 

“ _ Ne obeshchayu _ ,” said Natasha with a wink. 

 

Slowly the tension faded out of the room. Even the crickets had gone to sleep, and it felt like the three of them had been suspended in time together; a warm little bubble outside of regrets and obligations where everything was safe and nothing hurt. 

 

“Tomorrow?” Steve asked over Natasha’s head. She’d closed her eyes at some point, just enjoying this moment together. 

 

“Might as well,” said James. “Shuri’s tests on me all cleared before you got here, and she said if I want it, there’s some little place out in the foothills I can stay. I wouldn’t be a burden on T’Challa.”

 

“That’s good, Buck,” said Steve, and god he sounded so genuine. 

 

“Gonna miss you,” said James. 

 

“None of that yet,” said Natasha, opening her eyes. “We’re right here. We have tonight. We have each other.”

 

“Yeah?” James raised on eyebrow and bent down to kiss her. “You offering, sweetheart?”

 

“Sure am,” she said, kissing him back and nibbling on his lower lip until he opened for her properly. 

 

“ _ Motherofgod _ ,” Steve mumbled over their heads. 

 

“Aw, Stevie, we didn’t forget about you,” said James, pulling away from Natasha with a slight sucking pop.

 

Natasha could see the moment when Steve decided to stop being a martyr and to let whatever was going to happen, happen. His hands came up to cradle James’ face and he slanted his mouth over James’ lips, hungry and wanting.

 

He’d kissed Natasha like that, and she knew from experience that it made everything else fade away. 

 

“Bed,” she said, tugging at James’ belt. 

 

That got both their attention. “Yeah?” asked, one eyebrow rising. “You don’t have-”

 

“Both of you,” said Natasha, sliding off Steve’s lap and grabbing his hand. “Bed.”

 

Bucky grinned like a wolf before snagging Natasha around the waist and tugging her to stand between his legs. “Forgot how bossy you get when you want something,” he told her before slanting his mouth over hers. 

 

She’d expected this kiss to be all teeth and tongue; all high, desperate energy like so many of their kisses before. It had been what? Twenty-some years and what felt like several lifetimes for them. And yet here they were, together, touching each other,  _ remembering.  _ And he was gentle. 

 

James’ mouth on hers was slick and soft and his tongue moved over her lips in a slow, rocking rhythm. It felt like home. 

 

“I’ve been waiting for that for a couple decades,” he told her when they finally pulled back from each other, their lips swollen and cheeks flushed. 

 

“Me too,” said Natasha, fisting her fingers in his shirt. “Missed you.”

 

He kissed her again, quick and sweet. “Thought we weren’t talking like that.”

 

“Someone mentioned bed,” said Steve, leaning against Bucky and wrapping one of those (broad, calloused, kind) hands around the jut of her hip. This, this was bliss: both of their hands on her, no danger in sight, and the night unfurling before them like a banner of untapped possibilities. 

 

“Yes,” said Natasha, leaning over James’ knee to kiss Steve as well. “Bed sounds good.”

 

Bucky picked her up (would she ever be allowed to walk somewhere on her own again? She’d talk to them about it) and started walking towards the bedroom. “Did any of us actually lose our virginity in a bed?”

 

“No,” said Natasha. She didn’t elaborate; that was a memory nobody needed to carry. 

 

“Nope,” said Steve. “First time you sucked me off I was on a roof in Brooklyn. First time we fucked we were in the dirt somewhere in France.”

 

“ _ Ty vresh', _ ” said Natasha, peering back at Steve over James’ shoulder. 

 

“He’s not lying, sweetheart,” said James, dropping her onto the duvet of the guest suite’s massive bed. “He’s the one who stole vaseline out of the med kit.”

 

Natasha felt her eyes go wide. “ _ No,”  _ she breathed. 

 

“Oh yes,” said James with a grin, stretching out beside her on the bed. “C’mon, Stevie. Get over here and tell her your part of the story.” He patted the space behind Natasha with his metal hand. 

 

Natasha could  _ feel  _ the heat radiating off Steve as he slid up behind her. “It’s true,” he said. “We’d taken out a Hydra base and had broken through German trenches all in the same week. We made it to this little village and met with the Allied supply lines. God, that was a good night. Most of the men found someone to sneak off with.”

 

“Who bottomed?” 

 

James winked at her. “You didn’t really think I’d let Captain America’s first time be him taking it, right? He was nervous enough the way it was.”

 

Steve’s arm snaked over Natasha’s waist to smack James in the ribs. “Yeah, and you weren’t nervous?”

 

“I was nervous my first time, but I was also fifteen and I’d just crawled through Madeline Spinelli’s window.”

 

“Ohmygod,” mumbled Natasha into James’ chest. For the first time in her adult life she’d found herself in a situation that she was completely unprepared for: Steve and James together, alone and safe and with nobody tampering with their minds, were  _ unstoppable.  _ She was wedged between two of the most perfect specimens of the male form, and on top of that  _ that were fucking adorable. _

 

“That was your first time doing it with a man though,” said Steve. 

 

Steve was apparently the dark horse of her current bed companions. He’d kept up his end of the conversation with James, but he also had one hand inside her shirt, slowly tugging and rolling her nipples. Her heart was thumping along, and already she could feel her cunt damply swelling open. 

 

“Yeah,” said James fondly, leaning in to press a kiss under Natasha’s jaw. “What about your first time with a woman?”

 

Natasha snapped her head around fast enough that James only barely got out of the way in time. “Yeah Steve,” she said, one eyebrow raised. “What about your first time with a woman?”

 

He managed not to blush, and she was proud of him for it. Instead Steve jerked his head up, met her eyes, and told James, “You’re gonna get to watch it, you jerk.”

 

Natasha turned back to James, absolutely  _ giddy  _ at the joy of sharing this with them. 

 

James’ eyes widened. “You’re joking,” he said. “You two have been on the run for almost what, two years, and you hadn’t gotten around to sex yet?”

 

Steve stroked his hand down Natasha’s side, his fingertips lingering at the dip of her waist. “It didn’t seem… fair,” he said eventually. 

 

Natasha rolled back on her shoulder so she could look up at Steve’s face. 

 

“I didn’t want you to think I only wanted you because you were convenient,” he said slowly, like he was carefully choosing his words. “And we kept- I mean, we were hunting down Hydra, and I kept learning more and more about what happened to you and Bucky-”

 

“Yeah that’s a boner-killer,” James muttered, and Natasha almost laughed, because who would have expected this from her Soldier? This raunchy, earnest, ever-practical man? 

 

Steve rolled his eyes. “I guess… what mattered to me was that we were together. You trusted me. And yeah, there were a lot of cold showers, but waiting for this. I dunno. It felt right.”

 

Natasha pushed up to kiss him, her ab muscles tightened to hold her in place. It was- it was all shared breath and soft mouths and gentle exploration, and she sank into it like she would a hot bath. Steve slowly curled his body over her, his knees braced on either side of her left leg, one of his hands cradling the back of her skull. 

 

When they finally pulled apart James sighed and leaned in to press soft kisses to first Natasha, then Steve. 

 

“Don’t stop on my account,” he said. 

 

“You don’t want to play?” asked Natasha, combing her fingers through his hair. 

 

“Sure I do, beautiful,” he said. “But you should let Stevie take care of you first.”

 

“Then you should hold me,” said Natasha, wiggling a little when she pictured herself held between the two strong bodies beside her. 

 

“Yes ma’am,” said James with a grin. “Think I can do that. But probably we should get undressed first.”

 

“Rule one,” said Steve, levering himself off the bed and drawing Natasha after him. “Always listen to your sergeant.” Steve pulled Natasha’s shirt off over her head, and when he began to tug at the elastic of her sports bra Natasha felt James stand up behind her, his fingers thumbing at her belt. Topless and happy Natasha leaned back and twined her arms around James’ neck. 

 

“Hi,” she whispered, enjoying the slide of his skin against hers. Together they watched as Steve hurriedly undressed in front of them, James’ hands always on her, like if he let go she’d disappear.  

 

“Look at him,” James whispered in Russian, his fingers rolling at her nipples. “Look how pretty he is. Used to drive me nuts, catching him in the sunshine. He’s always had those Bambi lashes; and that  _ mouth-  _ trust me when I say it’s given me ideas for the better part of a century.”

 

His voice was low and familiar, the patter carnal, and it would be too easy to let that tone drag her under still, dark waters. 

 

In so many ways, sex was like plane-jumping: the rush of adrenaline, the endorphins, the swooping jolt through her stomach. There’s a moment in both (free falling at 12,000 feet and falling into a bed with a man) that Natasha knew well: it was the knife-edge, the  _ will-I-won’t-I, _ the balance of impulses that had warred inside her for as long as she could remember. 

 

She could choose to stay in control, to monitor every situation and try to stop any problems before they happened, to stay ever-vigilant and pull her chute and never, ever give up. 

 

Or… 

 

Or she could surrender to the fall, to the rush and the disbelieving laughter and the knowledge that it could end well or it could end terribly and there wasn’t anything she could do about it but enjoy it to the inevitable conclusion. 

 

This time, in a warm and shadowed room with James at her back at Steve now pressed to her front, Natasha let it go. This was her moment, this was  _ their  _ moment, and none of them were entitled to another. 

 

She was Natasha Romanov. She was the Black Widow. And nothing, not even her own self-interest, would take this moment from her. 

 

“I can’t believe this is real,” said James as Steve grabbed his hip, sandwiching Natasha in between. “Keep expecting to wake up, to be in that goddamned tank-”

 

“It’s real, Buck,” said Steve, leaning in to kiss James over Natasha’s shoulder. She turned her head to press kisses over both their jaws not able to tell (or care) where one man began and the other ended. “We’re real,” she echoed, sucking a bruise over a fluttering pulse. 

 

“Gotta be,” James rasped, voice already sex-rough. “‘Cause never in my life have I had a dream this good.”

 

Steve’s hands had dropped down to Natasha’s pants. Her belt clanked as it fell open, and within a second the  _ whirr  _ of her zipper followed. Natasha shimmied against them, enjoying the friction of James’ chest hair and the slide of skin on skin. The wriggle of her hips sent her pants to her ankles, and Steve was quick to cup her mons through her panties, broad fingers pressing. 

 

“Christ,” he muttered, blue eyes wide as he looked down at her. “You’re  _ hot.” _

 

Out of anyone else’s mouth it would have been indescribably cheesy. With Steve? With him so eager to learn her, to share her? 

 

Natasha slid her fingers down Steve’s stomach to the head of his cock. James kneaded at her breasts while she let the tip of Steve’s cock slide through her loose fist, reveling in the way his breathing hitched. 

 

In what had to be retaliation Steve slid his hand into her panties, his fingers fluttering over her cunt like he was mentally practicing piano arpeggios. (Natasha had  _ always  _ loved Steve’s hands: huge and strong but gentle and capable of soft and delicate tasks.)

 

“Been wanting this,” he muttered, bending to  kiss her. “Been wanting to get my hands on you, my mouth on you. God, Nat, sometimes I’d wake up in the morning and you’d be curled around me and all I wanted to do was slide down the bed and-”

 

She’d known he’d woken up hard. She’d woken up wet more mornings than not, and it only seemed fair that if she was going without, he would too. Besides: warmer-than-normal, very affectionate super-soldiers made damn good pillows. 

 

“Now,” she said, tightening her thumb around his cock and swiping it over that little rough patch beneath the flare of the head. 

 

Steve’s hips hitched. “You’re cheating,” he breathed. 

 

“All’s fair in love and war,” said Natasha, raising one eyebrow. 

 

Steve’s eyes narrowed, and his fingers moved over her more confidently than before, mapping her folds and curves, his gaze watching for her every reaction. “Right there,” said Natasha, her stomach muscles clenching when he circled around her clit. “Steve, there.”

 

“We do have a bed,” said James, sliding his hands to her hips. “We could use it.”

 

“Yeah,” said Steve, his fingers still moving deliberately against Natasha. 

 

James sighed, his breath a warm caress against the skin of her shoulder, and then he picked Natasha up and tugged he back with him, tumbling down onto the mattress. 

 

“James!”

 

“Uh-uh,” he said, banding his arm over her waist and holding her on top of him. “He was taking too long.”

 

Natasha could feel James’ cock hard against the small of her back, so she wiggled against it. He only gripper her harder and hooked his ankles around her calves. 

 

“Alright?” he whispered into her hair. 

 

“Yeah,” she replied, and then James swept his legs open, pulling her legs with his, holding her down and open for Steve like a holy offering, something to be admired and savored and worshipped. 

 

Natasha closed her eyes and let herself feel: James’ chest was rising steadily under hers, subtly rocking her, and his arm was warm and secure across her waist. Steve’s fingers were trailing butterfly-light up her thighs, leaving goosebumps in their wake, and her cunt was warm and damp and ready. She could float like this, lost in sensation, able to pretend that it would last forever. 

 

“You’re so goddamn pretty,” Steve muttered. “Both of you.”

 

He stripped her panties down her legs and then his fingers were caressing her pussy again, circling around her clit before dipping shallowly inside. 

 

“You’re a  _ tease,”  _ Natasha whined, canting her hips towards him. 

 

James laughed, the rumble of his chest vibrating through him and into her, making her smile. “If you don’t do something soon, I’m gonna get my mouth on her myself; show you how it’s done.”

 

Natasha shivered. 

 

“Yeah?” said Steve. “Well, alright then.”

 

In one graceful, coordinated movement James slid Natasha off his chest and moved himself into the center of the bed. Natasha sat up slowly, limbs already pleasure-heavy, and smiled down at her Soldier. 

 

“You know I love you?” she asked him Russian. (She’d told him this before: in quiet touches, in stolen moments, in whispered, forbidden words. They’d  _ survived. _ )

 

“I do, my love,” he said, raising her hand and pressing a kiss to her palm. “Now sit on my face,” he added in English. 

 

Natasha laughed, all the joy inside her bubbling out, and swung her leg across James’ chest. He’d been leaner when they’d first met, a hint of boyish innocence clinging to him. Now- he seemed almost cut out of basalt; out of dark, hard rock from the deeps, and even his lost arm couldn’t change that. 

 

He pressed a kiss to her knee and shoved her forward, and Natasha was deliciously aware of the drag of her damp cunt against his skin. “Alright Steve,” he said, winking up at Natasha. “Pay attention. And ‘Tasha, your assignment is to tell Steve what you’re feeling.”

 

_ Oh what a dirty trick-  _

 

He licked a swipe up her labia, his mouth managing to communicate indolence even though she couldn’t see it, and Natasha reached down to balance herself, her fingers lightly gripping his hair. 

 

“Can he breathe like that?” asked Steve, moving to sit on the bed beside her. 

 

“Yeah,” said Natasha, fond. “Not that he really needs to.”

 

James tipped his head back. “I’d die happy like this,” he said. “Steve, get behind her.”

 

“Then I can’t see,” said Steve. (Yeah, there was the stubborn man that had single handedly invaded an enemy fortress. Steve Rogers: A Little Shit since 1918.) “Thought the whole point of this was for you to teach me.”

 

“The  _ point _ of this,” said James, longsuffering, “Was for me to get my mouth on my woman again. Which is a treat, and you’d have learned that by now if you weren’t such a goddamn martyr.”

 

“Could we argue about this later?” asked Natasha, lightly pressing herself against James’ chin. 

 

James smiled and set himself back to work. His mouth, oh lord, his mouth. Slow and wet and deliberate, every motion designed to rock her gently towards orgasm; her arousal building gradually to terrifying heights. 

 

“What’s it like?” Steve asked, bracing himself over James’ stomach while Natasha shuddered against his mouth. James was fucking her with his tongue, and his fingers were tight enough on her thigh that Natasha thought she might bruise. Steve was stroking over her hips and belly, and she felt like she was fusing into them; a  _ NatJamesSteve,  _ three-headed and everlasting. 

 

“I- It’s-”

 

How did she tell him that riding James’ face was her favorite thing in the world?  That she remembered the first time, that she’d felt so safe and seen and tended to, that this had always been something reserved just for him?  

 

“Hot,” she said. “You’ve-  _ oh, James-  _ you’ve had his mouth, Steve. It’s like a furnace, and you think it’ll burn you but you don’t  _ care-” _

 

James was doing something to her clit, and she wondered if he could hear her. Steve put a heavy hand on her other hip, anchoring her in place as her thighs began to tremble. 

 

“And it feels like this is just for you, like you’re the only thing he’s thinking about-” She was babbling on, and low in her belly her muscles were coiling tighter and tighter. 

 

“-and it’s almost sick, how much you love it, love him and his mouth, and the fact that he’ll do this for you. You know you don’t deserve it-”

 

Her breath was hitching, and Steve’s other hand was on her elbow, keeping her balanced and still as the world narrowed down to them and this bed.  _ Fuck  _ everything else, this was all that mattered, right here, right now. 

 

“You know you don’t deserve this, but he does it anyway and you love him-”

 

She broke. He’d driven her up so high and so well that she came almost bonelessly, only willpower and Steve’s hands kept her upright. 

 

“ _ Motherofgod _ ,” Steve muttered, tugging her back into his arms. 

 

Natasha shuddered against him, her thighs still twitching, and watched through heavy-lidded eyes as James wiped the back of his arm over his mouth. 

 

“Yeah,” he purred, content. “Sometimes it’s a relief that no matter what happens, one way or another I always end up back between Black Widow’s thighs.”

 

“Oh god,” Steve muttered again. 

 

“Would the two of you mind getting off?” asked James, rolling his neck. “Steve, you’re not as little as you were,”

 

Steve slid onto the mattress, taking Natasha with him. 

 

“You okay?” he asked, smoothing sweat-curled hair away from her face. 

 

“I’m wonderful,” said Natasha, leaning forward to press a kiss to Steve’s (incredibly fuckable, James was right) mouth. 

 

James was scooting up the bed, resting on the pillows still stacked against the headboard. “You ready Steve?” he asked. 

 

Steve glanced from James to Natasha. “I am, but I don’t think-”

 

“One just takes the edge off her,” said James. “Two makes her all-”

 

“Dopey,” Natasha muttered as James said, “-sweet.”

 

“I’m alright, Steve,” said Natasha, letting her voice hit that low register she knew Steve liked. His eyes widened a little, and it was all she could do not to smile. “Let’s take care of you, yeah?”

 

“Ah-” 

 

“Come here, ‘Tasha,” said James, patting the space between his spread legs. “I’ll hold you, and Steve can fuck you.”

 

“I could ride him,” she offered, experimentally stretching out her legs. James was right: one orgasm really did just whet her appetite. “Then you can watch.”

 

“This way we can both feel you,” said James, extending his hand to her. 

 

Natasha went willingly, kissing James before sinking down and rolling onto her back. She knew (well, she suspected) that part of this was both her and James trying to fulfill something that Steve had likely assumed he’d lost. Didn’t all boys with romantic streaks the size of Brooklyn imagine themselves on top the first time? Besides, it wasn’t any skin off her nose if Steve wanted to do the work. (Well. This time.)

 

Her head was in James’ lap, her legs languously open, and Steve crept between them gingerly, his fingers trailing over her ribs. “Is this-?”

 

“You gotta touch her first,” said James. “Little Steve is only little in name.”

 

“You named his penis,” said Natasha in wonder, looking down the length of her body to Steve, crouched between her thighs. 

 

Steve shook his head at them and slid his palm up her thigh, his hesitation fallen away. She’d always liked that about him. If she asked to be launched off his shield he’d trust her to do it. If she said she wanted his cock, he’d trust her here, too. 

 

(Trust, Natasha had found, was the headiest drug.)

 

“Like this?” he asked, cupping her pussy in one broad hand and sliding his index finger inside of her to the second knuckle. 

 

“Yeah,” said Natasha, grinding into him. “Another, c’mon Steve.”

 

He shook his head with a crooked little grin and slid a second finger inside her. It wasn’t  _ fair  _ how much better his fingers were than her own. Broad and long and clever. 

 

“Hook ‘em like this,” said James, taking his hand off Natasha’s belly and crooking his first two fingers. “There’s this spot, a couple inches in. Might feel a little harder than the rest of her cunt. It’s- I forget what it’s called, but it’s kind of a magic spot.”

 

Natasha jolted when Steve followed James’ direction. “Right there,” she said, hips rocking up, wishing Steve would just fuck her already. “Right there _ , zvezda,  _ oh god.”

 

Talking during sex (or moaning, or gasping, or any noise at all) was something wonderful, something to be treasured. She could (and sometime did) come silently, a habit developed over painful, half-forgotten decades. 

 

Steve’s hips were pressing hard into the mattress now, grinding against the bed to get some relief for a cock that had to be painfully hard, and Natasha was almost out of her mind herself. “C’mon, Steve, now,” she said, gripping his wrist. “We can fingerfuck later.”

 

James laughed, his mirth rolling into her, and Natasha grinned up at Steve as he slid up the bed and pressed a kiss first to James’ knee, then her mouth. 

 

“Impatient, huh?” he asked, reaching down to strop his cock along her sex-swollen labia. 

 

Natasha moved with him, encouraging him to bump the tip of his dick against her clit, and then he guided himself home. 

 

“Ohgod,” he mumbled, the words falling from his lips like prayers. He was barely inside her, so Natasha took it on herself to help him along: she hooked both thighs around his narrow hips, levered her hips off the bed, and planted her heels into the flesh of his ass, forcing him more deeply inside. 

 

“ _ Christ,  _ Tasha,” he hissed, dropping his head into the crook of her shoulder. “Oh god, I don’t know- this may not last long.”

 

“It’s not like anything else,” said James, running his hand down Natashas breasts and belly. “It feels like she was made for you; like it’s the only thing you can think about. All that damp heat; how she walks around everyday with a fire in her belly. You wonder if your cock’s gonna get branded by her, and honestly, it ain’t a half bad idea.”

 

Steve was thrusting shallowly now, his breath hot and damp against her shoulder. He was long, James was right about that, and James’ filthy monologue was ratcheting her own arousal even higher. She was squashed between the two of the three men she’d ever fully trusted, and they trusted her, and nobody was going to take them away. (Not again. Never again.)

 

‘Buck,” Steve gasped, and Natasha felt his cock twitch inside her. “Shut up.”

 

“No,” said James, his fingers trailing down to find Natasha’s clit. “I’ve missed the two of you, jesus did I ever miss this.  You flush all the way down to your tits, ‘Tashekna, and Stevie, you get this wild look in your eyes, like you’re half-drunk and a little scared and stupid with it, like you can’t figure out how you got so turned on in the first place.”

 

Steve dropped his forehead to Natasha’s shoulder and licked at the skin, presumably tasting the salt of her sweat. James’ fingers were circling around her clit, and everything was heat and sex and  _ them.  _

 

“C’mon, Steve,” James cajoled, reaching further down to touch the place where Steve stretched Natasha open, where she was wet and hot and needy. Steve groaned, his hips grinding more roughly into hers than they had before, and Natasha let her back arch; let her fingers dig into the taunt skin of Steve’s arms. 

 

“You know you want to come in her, make a mess of her like she’s making you.”

 

That did it. Steve’s teeth scraped over Natasha’s clavicle as he came, his hips twitching into hers, his weight pressing her down into the bed. 

 

“Hey now,” said James, teasing. “Don’t crush the dame, you idiot.”

 

Steve pressed himself up, his eyes dazed and his skin damp. His cock was still inside her and more than half-hard, and in that moment, looking up at the golden, blue-eyed perfection that was Steve, Natasha didn’t care if she ever moved again. 

 

“And now you kiss her,” said James, and Natasha could  _ hear _ the smugness in his voice. 

 

Steve rolled his eyes but smiled down at Nat, almost shyly, before kissing her sweetly.  “Thank you,” he said, rubbing the tip of his nose to hers. “Sorry for my idiot friend.”

 

“I thought I was supposed to apologize for him,” said Natasha, pressing herself more firmly against James’ fingers. He was still working her over, his fingers at her clit slow but insistent, and Natasha could feel the slow tightening of the muscles in her stomach starting again. 

 

“Sorry I- you know,” said Steve, sliding out of her. 

 

“Mmm,” was all Natasha had to say to that. 

 

“What about Buck?” Steve asked, sliding his hand past Natasha’s head to palm James’ cock. 

 

James’ thigh tightened under her. 

 

“He’s been so patient,” said Natasha, stretching. “So good to us, Steve.”

 

“That mouth,” said Steve fondly. 

 

“Yeah,” said Natasha. She squirmed away from James and turned to look at him, and then at Steve. “You should return the favor.”

 

“I was hoping to,” he said, and then flopped between James’ legs again. It was an almost boyish move, and for a second Natasha could picture them as they had been: big and small, dark and light, half in love and crazy with it. 

 

Steve’s skin was golden against the paleness of James, and his fingers gripped James’ cock tightly, comfortably. 

 

“Oh,” said Natasha on a little sigh as Steve swallowed down the head of James’ cock, his eyelashes fluttering shut. He looked so pretty like that, with his mouth stretched wide and damp. 

 

James ran his fingers down Steve’s cheek with a look that Natasha almost turned away from. It felt like she was witnessing something sacred and private; like a little piece of rightness had returned to the universe this night. 

 

“Missed you,” he murmured, his voice low. 

 

Natasha slid her fingers down her belly to the swollen wet heat of her pussy. (She’d never quite managed that second orgasm, and watching Steve suck James’ cock was doing it for her.)

 

“C’mere, tsarina,” James told her. “Let me love you.”

 

“You seem occupied,” said Natasha, but she scooted across the bed anyway. 

 

“My heart, you know I can multitask,” he told her in Russian. “Up on your knees, come on.”

 

She widened her knees open and braced herself on James’s shoulder, letting her hips roll into his hand as forcefully as she wanted. 

 

Steve’s mouth was wet and red, his cheeks flushed, and James was rocking up into his face, the muscles in his belly rolling. They were perfect, the two of them, and they were hers. 

 

Natasha broke just before James did, her face pressed into the shadow of his neck and his hand cupping her pulsing cunt. She didn’t see him come, but she felt it: the hiss of air, the fluttering pulse, the jerking hips. 

 

“Steve,” he gasped. “Oh god, Stevie.”

 

“Love you, Buck,” said Steve, and Natasha rolled her face so she could watch them kiss: perfect. They were just perfect. 

 

“Love you too,” said Bucky, content. 

 

They showered together, James and Steve passing Natasha back and forth between them, all smiles and gentle hands and long, lingering kisses. The duvet was kicked off the bed and then they were in it, all tangled together, a pile of limbs and hopes and long-held dreams. 

 

“If someone had told me that I’d have this someday, I’d never have believed them,” said Natasha, pressing a kiss to the chest she was using as a pillow. 

 

“Me either,” said James, stroking light fingers up and down Natasha’s spine. “Too good; too impossibly good to ever happen.”

 

Steve was silent for a beat before he added, “Yeah, twenty-year old me would never in his wildest dreams have guessed that he’d have a threesome with two Russian-trained spies.” His voice was perfectly dry, but Natasha could hear the smile. 

 

“The nuns would have doused you in holy water if you even thought something like that,” said James. 

 

They fell silent again, listening to the quiet hum of the air conditioner and whatever breeze stirred in the trees outside. 

 

“I know you don’t want to leave me,” said James, voice low. “But it’s right. It’s the right thing for me, and you. When things are better- soon, I think- we’ll have this every night. I just need to get right, first.”

 

Natasha could feel Steve wanting to tell James that he was already right, here and now. She was proud of him when Steve only said, “I love you, Buck. If this is what you need, let’s do it.”

 

Natasha rolled to face him, her eyes searching the shadows for the familiar gleam of his pale (but not so sad) eyes. “I’ll remember you,” she promised him in Russian. 

 

“And I, you, my love,” he whispered back. 

 

It was all they needed to say. Their love was beyond questioning, beyond doubt. All they needed to do for each other was remember it. 

 

(And they did.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Sorry this update was a long time coming. I felt like pretty much everything hinged on this chapter and I really wanted to get it right. 
> 
> Next chapter we're back on the pain train: Steve and Natasha deal with the Snap's fallout back in New York. 
> 
> To all of you who have left love on this story: thank you so much. I love you guys, and it's been a privilege to share this with you <3 
> 
> PS. If you ever want to come hang out on twitter (no need to actually follow me, this isn't about numbers) I'm @caseydoesfandom.


	6. Cabinets and Closet Space

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha and Steve deal with the fallout of the Snap.

_ In every world there are ghost stories. Natasha knows them; she comes from a land of ghosts. They rattle around old buildings talking to loved ones who aren’t there anymore and weep in the night for the futures they’d lost.  After the Decimation, Natasha lives in a land of ghosts once more.  _

 

“Hey Nat,” said Steve, stepping into her office space. It was originally a corner of the Avenger’s Facility common floor, but she’d commandeered it. She needed space for the holo-projectors, she needed file storage and an old-fashioned printer and- 

 

-and she needed to work somewhere with better lines of sight, with better access to weapons and the facility shut-down controls, needed to have her own back because she wouldn’t be able to efficiently defend a building this big on her own. 

 

“Hey Steve,” she said, watching as he set down a stuffed canvas bag. “Laundry?”

 

Steve made a face. “The National Guard was dredging wreckage out of the river. They want to be able to get barges in here by Thanksgiving when people really start needing heat.”

 

He had his shield strapped to his back. Once upon a time, when the world was different and their friends were alive, he’d gone around without it more often than not. Now it went everywhere with him, sometimes even from room to room. 

 

“Go get it started,” she told him. “You hungry?”

 

He was always hungry.

 

Steve headed down the stairs to the laundry room and Natasha shuffled into the kitchen. They were lucky; Tony had designed the Facility himself and it ran exclusively off of renewable energies. When the power had failed in those first days after the Decimation, she’d been fine. 

 

Steve returned when she had rice simmering and fish fillets ready for the skillet.

 

“Reminds me of the thirties,” he said, dropping onto a bar stool at the counter. “Couldn’t get fresh meat into the city to save our lives.”

 

“I get it sometimes,” said Natasha, not turning to look at him. “Upstate here, there’s a couple families I can trade with. Are you just visiting for laundry and the pleasure of my company?”

 

She glanced over her shoulder and winked, and felt some of the  _ before  _ come back into the room. 

 

Steve smiled a little, there and gone again, before looking down at the counter top. “Yeah, figured I should come out and say hi, you know? And I’ve, ah. I’ve got the second of Bucky’s journals, as far as I can make out.”

 

There it was. She didn’t let her shoulders stiffen as she slid the fish into the hot frying pan. She knew that she’d help him; knew that she had never been able to say no in the past. 

 

“You sure that’s the best idea?” she asked, tone light as she pulled mixed veggies out of the microwave. 

 

“It’s just- it’s all I’ve got left of him,” said Steve quietly, and she could hear the misery in his voice.

 

“What happened to all that talk about ‘moving on’?” Natasha asked. 

 

(In so many ways, Steve had moved on. He’d taken from sleeping in her bed to sleeping in his own, saying he was coming to bed too late and didn’t want to disturb her. Then he’d started staying in the city more and more, and now- now they were here.)

 

“Some people do,” said Steve. “But not us, apparently.”

 

Natasha shrugged and flipped the fish. Governments fell, people died, relationships crumbled, and the world forgot. Eventually, everyone moved on.

 

~~~

 

_ “I saw brown-haired girls in the square today. They were going to church with an older woman. Threat level low. They did not see me.  _

 

_ “I remember little girls in a closet, and I shot them. I remember holding a little brown-haired girl during a thunderstorm. We danced to the sound of rain. She smelled like soap. Why do I have a memory like that? Blood and soap.” _

 

Steve was staring into the corner of the room while Natasha read out loud to him, his eyes focused on nothing in particular. 

 

“Becca,” he said. “He’d do that with the oldest of the girls. Ma Barnes, she’d lost two babies between Bucky and Becca. He was eight years older than she was. I’d forgotten about that.”

 

Natasha didn’t say anything. This wasn’t for her, none of it was. She hated this, and Steve knew it, and yet he asked her anyway. She wanted to remember her Soldier as he’d been. He’d had his memories tampered with enough, had had his privacy and autonomy taken away over and over. These hadn’t been meant for her eyes; hadn’t been meant for anyone's eyes, and she hated looking into them now.  _ But it was Steve.  _

 

“The next page is dated four days after the girls,” she said. “He talks about blue eyes. Probably yours, but he lists the names and dates of people he killed too, and a description of where he was.”

 

Steve closed those (July blue) eyes of his and nodded. 

 

Natasha turned the page, reluctant to see what horrors Bucky’s mind had thrown up next. She  _ hated  _ this; hated having to revisit what they’d done to him because every time she and Steve went over James’ journals she ended up dreaming about what was done to her, too. 

 

It was a terrible thing, to not trust your own mind. 

 

“This is a timeline,” she said, turning the book to the side and gently moving a ragged sticky-note marker to the side. “Most of the events have been scratched out or erased or moved, but this is where he started piecing it together.”

 

The line itself had been slashed across the page in heavy black ink. In the same ink, the second tick said, “Woke up during surgery. Took my arm,” above the year 1945. It looked like James had gone back and later added, “Fall?” just before it. 

 

Nat passed the notebook to Steve, who read the entries that were in French or English. He turned the page, and Nat could see that the timeline stretched on again. They’d all been alive for so long. So fucking long. 

 

“I hate this,” said Steve, his voice low. He closed the journal and tossed it onto the desk with a thump. “I hate that they did this to him, and I hate that I wasn’t  _ there  _ for him.”

 

“You were mostly dead, Steve,” said Natasha. She was tired of this. (She was  _ tired. _ )

 

“Yeah, but- before. Even when I had nothing, when I was sick and my mam was dead and the whole fucking country was starving to death- I had Bucky.”

 

_ “Then you didn’t have nothing,”  _ said Natasha through gritted teeth. Her head was killing her and she tried to remind herself that getting angry didn’t help anything; getting angry was a liability, but how dare he? How dare he play the martyr and make what she and James had gone through about himself? 

 

“No- Nat, that’s not-”

 

She didn’t let him finish. Natasha shoved up out of her chair and splayed both hands on her desk. “You had something. You had everything. You had a place to call your own, you had people who loved you, you had a  _ name.” _

 

Steve held his hands up, palm-out. “Wait-”

 

“No. I’m going to finish.” Natasha was breathing hard and there was still a part of her that wanted to sit down, to apologize, and to act like nothing had happened. But then- there were a lot of things she  _ should  _ have done. 

 

“There were times when I’d wake up in the chair right after a wipe and I wouldn’t remember my own name until someone told it to me. Then it would feel familiar. Everything I had belonged to the party or to the Red Room, including me. You want to talk about having nothing? I’ve done it. James has, too. 

 

“And both of us-” Natasha heaved a huge breath, willing her tone to stay strong and even. “We had literally nothing, Steve, and both of us still wanted to live so bad. So fucking bad. You’re not that broken, small kid anymore Steve. And you’ve always had something to live for, even if it didn’t feel like it. Even if you wanted to ignore it.”

 

“I know,” said Steve quietly, his eyes focused on her face. “I’m sorry.”

 

“And… I don’t want to read these anymore. James didn’t give us permission, and I can’t, Steve. I read these, and I remember what it was like to have all the walls in my mind breaking down. To remember different histories, to remember all the kills, all the  _ men,  _ the feeling of restraints around my arms. Find another translator.”

 

“Okay,” said Steve quickly. “I will. I’m- you’re right. You’re absolutely right.” He was leaning forward in his chair, his eyes focused on hers. 

 

“You can still come up and do your laundry,” said Natasha, risking another glance at Steve. “I do miss you.”

 

She could feel how tentative her smile was, so she slouched back down into her chair to cover for it. The eye always follows movement. 

 

“Nat- I’m sorry,” said Steve again. “I was selfish. I’m sorry that it felt like-”

 

He swallowed and looked away, and even now Natasha loved him. He knew he shouldn’t apologize for her feelings. He knew he could do better, so he would. He was  _ Steve.  _

 

“I’m sorry I haven’t been here for you,” he said. “It hurts to be here feeling like I don’t have anything to do, just missing… everyone. In New York there’s always something I can work on, and being useful… it helps.”

 

“I know,” said Natasha, gesturing to the cluttered office around them. “I could come see you too, but-” Fucking feelings.  _ Talking.  _ Ugh. “It’s just… what if Rhodey finds Clint? Or what if someone turns up, or-”

 

“That’s not on you, Nat,” said Steve gently. “You don’t have to handle this yourself.”

 

“I know,” said Natasha, pinching the bridge of her nose. (She was so tired.) “But someone needs to do it, and-”

 

“We’ll do better,” said Steve. “We’ll see each other. You’re so important to me, Nat. I don’t know- I don’t know what I would have done if you’d gone, too. I really- I can’t imagine it.”

 

His voice caught and Nat rounded her desk to stand in front of him. She reached out as he leaned forward, and she stroked his hair as he rested his face against the smooth skin of her clavicle. “I missed you too,” Natasha whispered. 

 

“Come to the city tonight. Let’s both get out of here, okay? Maybe we can just be us. Steve and Natasha.”

 

“Alright,” she said. He was right, she did need out of the Facility. It would make her feel better, and some distance might give her a new perspective. And, at the end of the day: she wanted to. “You know, I never thought I’d be nostalgic for running around the world as fugitives,” she said. 

 

Steve huffed a laughed and pushed himself away. “I know,” he said. “I was thinking the same thing. It feels… simple, looking back.”

 

Natasha started to move away and Steve’s arm wrapped around her waist, holding her close as he stretched up to brush his lips over her cheek. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’m sorry I took you for granted, sorry I didn’t think- or didn’t  _ care _ about how the journals affected you. I’ll do better.”

 

“It’s okay,” said Natasha. “You can make it up to me.”

 

His whole face lit up at her mild flirt. Smiles, laughter, flirting- it all felt special these days. 

 

“We’ll go to my apartment,” he said. “Mrs. Gallo gave me a chocolate cake for bringing up her heating oil.”

 

“Let’s go to my place,” she said. It was an impulse, and probably stupid, but oh- she loved this man. She could give him this, even if he never realized what it meant. 

 

Steve’s eyebrows rose. “Your spot in the city? We haven’t been there before.”

 

“First time for everything,” she said arily. 

 

~~~

 

Her apartment wasn’t what Steve had expected. He wasn’t sure what he’d been predicting, but it wasn’t this: a small apartment in a three-story brick apartment complex in Hell’s Kitchen. (At least he’d been right about Manhattan.) The kitchen was small, and she had nothing on the counters except an electric kettle. A wingback chair had been shoved up under the windows, and a long, low sofa stood across from rows and rows of bookshelves. It was warm and exceedingly simple. 

 

It was… Natasha, he guessed. 

 

“Not what you were expecting?” she asked with a smirk. She’d claimed the wingback immediately, curling into it with a sigh. 

 

He really should be used to her reading his mind. “I guess I always pictured you somewhere like the tower,” he admitted. “All slick lines and leather furniture.”

 

Natasha laughed. “Not quite,” she said. 

 

“It’s the jackets,” said Steve, pointing a finger at her as he crossed to the shelves. “You wear so much leather I assume you just live in it. I’m guessing you don’t have a leather blanket on your bed, right?”

 

Her laugh felt like a baptism. “You think I’m that dramatic?” she teased. “Next you’re going to ask if I sleep in a coffin.”

 

Steve grinned. “Let’s find out,” he said before scooping her out of the chair and tossing her over his shoulder. 

 

“Steve!” she gasped, and he could feel her stomach muscles flexing as she balanced over his arm. (He also knew that she wanted to play. If she didn’t, he’d be on the floor and probably bleeding already.)

 

Her bedroom was down a short hall, and it didn’t contain a coffin. The bed frame was painted white steel and was covered with a dove-grey duvet. It had been shoved into the far corner. A blonde-wood dresser was across from it, holding a small TV. It was… quiet. It was peaceful. 

 

Steve dropped Nat onto the bed and sprawled out beside her, both of them laying sideways across the mattress. 

 

“See? Normal,” she said, turning to look at him. 

 

“It’s simple,” he said, dropping a kiss to her curls. (She still smelled like gardenia.)

 

One sleek eyebrow rose. “You trying to say something, soldier?”

 

“No ma’am,” said Steve, cupping her head and lowering his mouth to hers. It had been …months since they’d done this, since they’d held each other and kissed like the world wasn’t ending. He’d missed it. 

 

When Natasha’s hand slid down his belly and over his jeans to his half-hard cock Steve gently moved her hand away. 

 

“Later,” he told her when she raised an eyebrow in question. “Can I just hold you tonight?”

 

A look of relief flitted across her face like a snapshot, there and gone again, and if he hadn’t been paying attention Steve might have missed it. 

 

“Yeah,” she told him, pressing a chaste kiss to his lips. “I’d like that.”

 

“We’ve got all the time in the world,” said Steve into her hair. It was a lie, and they both knew it: anything could happen, anyone could come for them, but for tonight… tonight they had each other, and that was all that mattered. 

 

~~~

 

Steve woke desperately needing to pee. It was early still- just after five- and even though he knew he could be up for the day, he’d rather get a glass of water and head back to bed. Holding Natasha was a privilege he hadn’t appreciated for the past couple months, and he wasn’t going to waste the opportunity now. 

 

In the end, he forgot that he’d started out looking for a glass. 

 

Steve’s mam had always said you could tell what kind of people lived in a house by the kitchen. Some were cluttered and lived in, others regimented and over-scrubbed. Some were poor, some were rich, and some fell in between. Natasha’s kitchen told a different story.

 

The rest of her apartment was so normal, so cozy and deliberate and well-maintained. Under a light layer of dust all those bookshelves gleamed with furniture wax. Her windows were clean, and she had thousand-thread-count sheets on the bed. It was  _ normal.  _ It was the Natasha that Steve glimpsed in quiet moments: colorful and content and strong. But this- Steve had to wonder if the rest of her apartment was another mask Nat was presenting to the world. 

 

The first cabinet Steve opened, the one closest to the sink, was filled with medical supplies. Gauze, boxes of suture kits, rubbing alcohol, saline flush, z-packs… she was ready for anything. There was even a mirror on a complex series of hinges and extendable arms: Steve realized with a start that Natasha was prepared to stand between two mirrors to treat wounds she couldn’t see herself. 

 

Thirst forgotten, Steve opened the next cabinet to find ammo and MREs. In the cabinets under her little island he found an armory that made even him weak at the knees. In the pantry were more cleaning supplies than any one small apartment needed, including two  _ gallons  _ of the enzyme-based blood-remover Bruce had invented. 

 

The last, half-sized cabinet next to the fridge was the one that broke Steve’s heart. With increasing desperation Steve had been hoping to find something normal: a pot, a package of instant soup, something, anything that said Natasha planned to actually live here. Everything else (the packaged military meals, the weapons, the medical supplies)- it was all about  _ not dying.  _

 

Nothing here said she actually wanted to live. 

 

The last cabinet had one plate. One glass, one coffee mug, one fork, one spoon, and one knife. There was a small frying pan and a two-quart pot. There was a wooden spoon, dark from use resting over the lip of the single bowl. 

 

None of it matched. It was all second-hand and grouped together like uncomfortable guests at a wake. 

 

Steve’s fingers were white knuckled on the cabinet door. He didn’t have to wonder if this was for show because he knew. Of course this was for show, and Natasha was her own intended audience. 

 

_ This is what you will have,  _ she was telling herself.  _ Cold, lonely mornings. Small dinners for one. You will come home to no one. You will share with no one. Your life is what you allow yourself, and  _ this is all you get.

 

Steve’s vision was grey at the edges as he focused on the lonely display in the cabinet. He wanted to weep for her, wanted to break things, wanted to go out and bring her heavy ceramic dishware that could fill her cabinets instead of the military efficiency he’d found instead. 

 

“Steve?”

 

Her voice was thick and groggy. When Steve turned he found her leaning against the wall of the short hallway back to her bedroom, her hair tousled and cheeks flushed with sleep. 

 

“Find everything okay?” she asked, squinting. 

 

Steve reminded himself that this was a gift. She’d brought him here, to this hidden part of herself. She let herself drowse near him; let herself float in a half-asleep haze instead of waking herself fully with a willpower at which Steve could only marvel. She’d shown him this part of herself, and he hadn’t appreciated it until now.

 

“Natasha-”

 

His voice cracked. 

 

“Bring me some water too, okay?” she said before going back to the bedroom.

 

Steve stood in the gloom of her kitchen and tried to get himself under control. He couldn’t run out to buy her dishes, and he shouldn’t run back there to start declaring how much he loved her and was grateful for her in his life. 

 

That was the point she’d made last night about him never truly having had nothing: it wasn’t always about him. He didn’t get to do something just because it would make  _ him  _ feel better. 

 

Steve took a few deep breaths, remembered what it felt like to wake up with Natasha laying on his chest as a soft, warm weight, and filled the glass with water. He drank half, refilled it, and padded back to the bedroom.

 

Natasha was curled in bed with her back to the wall, her green eyes half-open and focused on him. 

 

“Morning,” she mumbled as Steve curled himself around her, hitching her leg over his hip. 

 

“Morning,” he told her, leaning in to press a kiss to her forehead. “Go back to sleep. We don’t have anywhere we have to be.”

 

Natasha raised on eyebrow, but did lift her head to rest her cheek against Steve’s bicep. “We both know that’s not true, Mr. “I’m Captain America, I don’t lie”.”

 

Steve’s lips quirked. “We don’t have anywhere we absolutely have to be. We’ve been assigning ourselves these missions.”

 

“That’s worse,” said Natasha, letting her eyelids flutter closed. “That means we don’t have anywhere we  _ have  _ to be, we just have places we  _ should  _ be.”

 

Without makeup to darken her lashes and shadow her eyelids she looked like a watercolor: blonde-tipped lashes, translucent blue veins, the slightest sleep-warm flush. Steve had seen her dressed up for gala events, had seen her perfect and lethal in battle, had watched her in a hundred different disguises. This version of Natasha was his favorite: private and trusting and  _ his,  _ as much as she’d ever allowed herself to be anyone’s.

 

“I should be with you,” he said, his gaze still steady on her face. “That’s where I should have been, Nat.” She’d had his back in pretty much every fight he’d had since waking up at SHIELD. He hadn’t done the same for her. 

 

Her eyes opened again, steady and knowing. “Is that what you want?” she asked. 

 

“Yes.” He was sure of that in a way that he hadn’t been since running after the assassin that wore Bucky’s face. They were his touchstones; the linchpins of his reality. 

 

Natasha stroked a hand over his shoulder and down his arms, her nails lightly scratching, before Steve wove her fingers through his. She was quiet, in assessment mode, and Steve wished (as he usually did) that he knew what went on in her head. 

 

“I love you,” she said simply, her gaze still steady on his. 

 

_ She loved him.  _ It dropped into the conversation like a weight on Einstein’s rubber sheet, warping the landscape around it. 

 

Had he ever told her  that he loved her? Plain and straightforward? He’d tossed plenty of “love yous’ into their night with Bucky, back in Wakanda, but had he ever looked Natasha in the eye and told her? If he hadn’t, this might be the thing he regretted most in his long and illustrious history of impulsive decisions and bad choices. 

 

“Love -for a long time I was told that it was for children. An emotional and animal response; the result of hormonal surges warping our thought processes. Love was something we could evolve beyond, if we only tried and trained hard enough.”

 

Steve held himself still, so still, not wanting to do anything that might make her look away or stop telling him these things, these truths that cut him more sharply than any of her knives ever could. 

 

“I loved James. I  _ love  _ James,” she corrected. She’d never stopped talking about their teammates in the present tense. “And I love you. And maybe that is for children, but I don’t  _ care.  _ I love you, and I want you to know.”

 

He didn’t deserve her. 

 

“I love you too,” he told her. “And I wish I’d told you before.”

 

Natasha rubbed her cheek against his bicep the way a cat might when it wanted to be stroked. “It feels wrong, though,” she admitted. “To find ourselves together and in love when so much has been taken.”

 

“Life goes on,” said Steve, sinking his free hand into the hair at the nape of her neck, cradling her skull in his palm. “I forget that. I feel like it’s the one thing the world keeps trying to hammer into me, Nat. Your mom dies, and life goes on. You’re born sick, and life goes on until it doesn’t anymore. Your friend dies, you wake up in the wrong century, your friends all die again, and life  _ keeps happening.  _ I’ve spent so much time tied up, thinking about my past, that I haven’t paid attention to what’s in front of me.”

 

Natasha turned to press a kiss to the skin of his arm. “It’s not like I’ve been doing much better,” she said. “Once I would have known that me sitting there, filtering through information alone wouldn’t have been the most efficient use of my time. I’d have come up with another plan. But it scares me, to go on without them. It feels like losing all over again.”

 

Steve shifted to rest his forehead against hers, hands clenched tight to keep them from trembling. He could ask her- her could ask her so many things, but what right did he have to ask her to do something for  _ him?  _

 

What finally came out of his mouth in a near-reverent whisper was this: “Natasha Romanov, will you be mine? My family?”

 

She didn’t smile, didn’t quirk a brow at him, didn’t so much as blink. “Steve Rogers,” she told him, voice low. “I already am.”

 

Steve kissed her lightly on a shuddering breath. “I’d like to spend more time with you at the Facility,” he told her. “Not working, just… with you.”

 

“It’d probably be healthy for me to get out more,” she admitted. “Maybe come out in the field with you some, or come here.”

 

“If we come here I’m going to buy some dishes,” Steve told her, his heart racing as he felt himself start to smile. “Sharing a fork may be cute in the movies, but it’s not exactly the most efficient way to eat.”

 

“You asking for closet space too, Rogers?” Natasha asked, pressing herself flush against him. 

 

“Yeah, I am,” said Steve, smiling against her mouth. “What are you gonna do about it?”

 

“Take you shopping,” she said, running a hand over his chest. “No room for pleated pants in my closet.”

 

Steve tossed back his head and laughed, loving how Natasha’s eyes glinted up at him, sly and seductive. 

 

In a soft white bed, nearly a year after the end of the world, Steve and Natasha loved each other in the half-light of dawn, the world outside forgotten. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to those still reading along <3


	7. Most Loyal Avenger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We owe it to the people not in this room to try. 
> 
> aka, Endgame.

_ Whatever it takes.  _

 

The air on Vormir was thin and bitter, smelling of dark, closed-in places and tasting of ash. Clint was pacing, the sound of his feet on bare stone slightly muffled, like it was traveling over a long distance. The stone Natasha sat on was cool through the material of her suit. 

 

_ A soul for a soul.  _

 

Natasha was eighty-five years old, and still death hadn’t come for her.

 

Natasha was never the one to die. Everyone around her died: empires had collapsed around her ears, and still she lived on, her heart thumping traitorously in her chest- she had survived the end of the world. Probably it was a punishment. She had meted out so much death in her time that her own end would not ( _ will not _ ) come easy; it will not be so painless as crumbling into the dust from which she was formed. Survival was a punishment, but it was also a message, because her ledger wasn’t clean. She still had debts to be repaid. 

 

How much more did the world want from her? 

 

She already knew the answer to that: everything.

 

The world would take everything from her, and she would give it freely. It required all of her stubbornness, all of her skill, all of her long-harbored and misplaced faith that the good guys  _ had  _ to win, that there was some purpose in the chaos of life. 

 

Natasha fought with everything she had, every little trick she’d been taught, and so she won, her final victory twofold: Clint would return home to his family, and her family would come back. They all would; all of them. 

 

The team was  her family, and her family wouldn’t let her sacrifice be for nothing. The would win. It was all she needed to know, as her hand slipping in Clint’s, as the void beneath her beckoned. 

 

“It’s okay,” she told him, looking up into the beloved face of the man who’d saved her all those years ago. She wished he knew that this was how it had to be.  _ This  _ was how she tipped the balance,  _ this  _ was how she saved more souls than she’d taken over her long and red-tinged years. 

 

Clint’s face was wet with tears, and they looked a little like blood in this light, reflecting the sanguine sky. 

 

“It’s okay,” Natasha told him again, enjoying the ache in her shoulder. (Pain was how you knew you were still alive.) “Let me go.”

 

“No,” said Clint, and  _ oh,  _ he was stubborn; that same stubborn determination had walked her into SHIELD HQ alive. 

 

Natasha smiled at him a little, pleased with the symmetry of her life, pleased with Clint, pleased that she could do this for her family, and then she shoved off the cliff face, watching as Clint grew smaller, her hair streaming around her, a red banner in the wind proclaiming victory, and life, and triumph, and-

 

(“ _ So as someone watches, the star gets more and more red. I feel like that, James. Drifting away, with everything getting redder as I go.”) _

 

_ - _ and so Natasha Romanov fell, rocketing further and further away from home, with everything getting redder as she went.

 

* * *

 

_ Because sometimes (every generation or so) justice trumps the entropy of the natural universe, this happens: _

 

Tony wakes in water. 

 

It’s in his hair and ears and under his back, and everything he heard was muffled and slow and distant. There’s something… important, something he was supposed to do, but eh- Pep’ll get it. Pepper took care of most things anyway, and when  _ was  _ the last time he’d taken a vacation? 

 

But that feeling was still there; that important, urgent thing he needed to remember.     
  
“Hey Friday?” he said, trilling his fingers through the water. It’s just slightly warm, barely hotter than the temperature of his body.  “Friday, what important thing did I forget?”

 

The voice that answers isn’t Friday’s. Not even close. 

 

“Still not your secretary, Stark,” she said. “Never was.”

 

Tony sat up with a jolt, and when he opened his eyes his breath escaped on a huff of surprise. The sky- it’s the color of a fresh wound, all crimson streaks over bruise-toned purples and yellows. The water- endless, mirror-smooth, knife bright- reflects the sky and goes on and on and on forever. 

 

He and Natasha Romanov are, apparently, sitting on it. 

 

“Didn’t pack my floats,” is the first thing that tumbles out of his mouth. 

 

“Don’t need them,” said Natasha, looking off into the distance. 

 

Tony studied her profile more closely. It was definitely Natasha, but not the one he’d seen most recently. “Got some work done,” he said lightly, ignoring the way the diffuse light was playing over both their features. “Good work, too. Can’t even make out the stitch line.”

 

Natasha smirked at him, those full lips quirking, and yeah- that was definitely the Grade-A, former-soviet-assassin Tony had come to love. Like.  _ Trust.  _

 

“It’s me,” she said. 

 

“Yeah, worked that out already,” said Tony, interrupting. He hated being told shit he already knew. (It was almost as bad as being handed things.) “So, where are we. Got zapped to the Big Bang? ‘Cause god, I’d hate that. There won’t be anyone else to talk to for oh, a couple billion years. And even then, I don’t speak Neanderthal.”

 

“Tony.”

 

That shut him up. It wasn’t the interruption, it was her tone. A decade of working with her, and he’d never heard it before. 

 

“Time travel, then,” he said. “Like with Scott. I’m glad you aren’t a baby; can’t stand other people’s kids.”

 

“Not time travel,” she said, serene green eyes meeting blue. 

 

“Oh. So we bit it. Kicked the bucket, took the Midnight Express, bought the farm.”

 

“Yep,” she said, and her lips quirked into a smile again. 

 

“Why are you in my heaven? I mean, not that I haven’t thought about it, but-” His mouth always did run away with him when he panicked, but- he wasn’t. He knew he  _ should  _ be panicking, but he couldn’t. It couldn’t reach him here. 

 

“It’s… not heaven. Not yet. You used the Stones, you must have. I was the sacrifice for the soul stone, and you were the wielder. It… connected us, for a minute.”

 

“Sacrifice,” Tony repeated slowly. It was coming back now- the snap, the look on Thanos’ face, the tear tracks through the grit on Clint’s cheeks. “You know- I never did give you permission to die.”

 

“Like I said,” said Natasha. “Not your employee. Never was.”

 

He ought to tell her what it meant. He should tell her that he took it all back, all the jokes about her being a sleeper agent, all the accusations of spying and betrayal. He should apologize, and he should say goodbye, but sue him: that’s never been his style. 

 

“So how come you got the whole- upgrade- going,” he said, gesturing to Natasha’s face. When he lifted his hand out of the water, it came up dry. 

 

She shrugged. “What do I look like?”

 

“You. Younger. There’s a scar under your ear, running down your neck.”

 

The smile she gave him… that smile. He was a married man and an unapologetic, narcissistic asshole, but it still managed to flip something in him, to tug at that heart he always swore he never had. 

 

“Clint,” she said, raising her fingertips to the scar. “I- when he didn’t kill me. When I turned myself in to SHIELD. He nicked me.”

 

“A nick, huh.” Tony worried the edge of one cuticle with his teeth. “So that’s, what? What you looked like when you were at your most murderous?”

 

“No,” said Natasha, her face serene. “It’s what I looked like when I was born.”

 

* * *

_ There are worse ways to go.  _

 

Steve looked down the sloping crater at Thanos’ army, at the chitauri and monsters and aliens, legions of them. They kept coming, more and more, and Steve’s thigh was still bleeding sluggishly down into his boot, filling his sock with blood. 

 

The ground thrummed under alien feet, and Steve could already see the triumph in Thanos’ eyes. 

 

She’d died for this. She’d died alone, and no matter how many more battles he fought, Steve wouldn’t be able to make that up to her. For Natalia, he knew- for the child of the Red Room- it hadn’t been about the method of death. It had been about the location; about the final journey. 

 

_ There are worse ways to go,  _ she’d said. 

 

_ There are worse ways to go: alone.  _

 

Steve’s fingers slipped on his own blood as he tightened the straps on his shield one last time. Natasha had had such faith in him; Natasha had trusted them to see this through. 

 

And so he would. 

 

Because there  _ are _ worse ways to go. 

 

* * *

 

_ There is a world where Peter looks for Natasha in the chaos of battle, and there is a world where he finds her.  _

 

The bombs had stopped falling, but Peter could still feel the ground trembling under his back as he clutched the stones to his chest. His suit was down and his ears were ringing and honestly, he wasn’t even sure where he  _ was.   _ Dr. Strange had opened one of those yellow sparkling portal things and told him they needed to go back-up Cap and Tony and yeah, he was all about that, so he’d webbed through the portal but holy cow, he really hoped he wasn’t on another planet again. 

 

There were shards of a building around him and dust and smoke hung thick and heavy in the air. His head ached and he had to get these stones away, Captain America was counting on him-

 

“Hey,” said a glowing woman. She was standing over him with her hair rippling as the warm aura shifted. 

 

“Hi, ma’am,” he said, the edge of the gauntlet digging into his chest. “I’m Peter Parker.”

 

She smiled at him, and it was a nice smile. It reminded him a little of Natasha’s, all closed-lips and crinkled eyes. “Hi Peter Parker,” said the new glowing lady, and how many superheroes were out there anyway? 

 

“I’m Carol. I hear you’ve got something for me.”

 

Wordlessly he handed her the gauntlet and let her pull him to his feet. The energy surrounded his hand, but he couldn’t feel a thing. 

 

Apparently the orc-army had noticed Carol too (that glow was kinda hard to miss) because they were all lining up, heading her way. “I don’t know how you’re gonna get through that,” said Peter. 

 

(Honestly, he wasn’t sure how he was going to get through this, either. Aunt May was going to kill him. Aunt May was  _ really  _ going to kill Mr. Stark.)

 

“She has help,” said a tall Black woman armed with a spear, and then Wanda was landing next to him, and Miss Potts, and a lady on an actual freaking  _ Pegasus,  _ and the guys at school were never going to believe this, but where was-

 

“Hey spiderling,” said Natasha, sliding down the slope to stop next to him, balanced and poised and unrumpled. How did she  _ do  _ that.  

 

“Hey, Natasha,” he said, and a breath he’d been holding since the portal opened  _ whooshed  _ out of him. “I did that thing we were talking about, rolling on my shoulder like you said. It really helps.”

 

“Good,  _ Petya,” _ she said, not taking her eyes off the screaming horde of monsters in front of her. “When this is all over, we’ll work on you not having to fall at all.”

 

(And they did.)

 

* * *

 

_ Fury had suggested that Romanov wouldn’t like a funeral. “She was a private person,” he said when Steve’s jaw clenched. “For god’s sake, she was a spy.” _

 

_ “And so was I,” said Bucky. He’d been out of the business since 2014, but some skills… some skills never leave. And besides: he’d already shot Fury three times. It wouldn’t be hard to add a fourth. _

 

_ There would not  _ be  _ a world where Natasha didn’t get a funeral. _

 

The day of her funeral was cold, and overhead maple trees were crowned in deep-red glory. Arlington National Cemetery was wearing the Black Widow’s colors, and Bucky managed to smile at that. She’d have gotten a kick out of it. 

 

He and Steve stood by her casket, and around them Sam and Pepper and Morgan and Wanda and- everyone- stood and listened to Taps ringing out over the Potomac, brassy and bleeding and mournful. 

 

Bucky was glad Steve had fought for this: for the funeral and the burial plot and all of it. Tasha deserved a peaceful place to rest. The rabbi recited the  _ el malei rachamim  _ and his voice was soothing. It was like- like the words had been worn smooth from use. Bucky liked that; liked the lilt and rhythm of a comfortable faith. It had been a damn long time since he’d had any. 

 

But that was the thing. He’d believed in  _ her.  _ She was the impossible girl, and she had never, ever failed. 

 

(She’d never failed. But she’d died.)

 

He went back after dark. He walked right out of the hotel room he’d been sharing with Steve, walked directly past the guards they laughably called security, and found his way back to her grave without light or directions. He didn’t need them, not anymore. Some things… some things you always remember. 

 

“It’s me, Natashenka,” he said, feeling like a damn idiot. 

 

The soil had been mounded over her casket, fresh and smelling like dark, hidden things. Bucky ran the tips of his human fingers over the sloping crest of her headstone, picturing the deeply etched inscription: 

 

NATASHA ROMANOV

The Most Loyal Avenger

_ May all serve so faithfully.  _

 

There weren’t any dates. She could take that, her final secret, to the grave. 

 

“I missed you,” he said. He’d been in therapy for six weeks before he’d told Dr. Farber anything meaningful, and now here he was, talking to a grave in the dark. 

 

“I couldn’t remember you. I didn’t even remember that I couldn’t remember; it was like I was walking around drunk with a fever of a hundred and four. But I missed you. I’d wake up reaching for someone, if they left me outta the ice long enough. It was you. Or Steve,” he amended. “Don’t tell him this, but I remembered you first.”

 

“You punk,” called a voice from behind him. “I knew it.”

 

“Hey,” Bucky called, the back of his neck prickling as Steve walked up behind him. “You know what your mam always said about eavesdroppers.”

 

“Yeah,” said Steve, slinging an arm around Bucky’s shoulders. “She said they were the best informed.”

 

Bucky pulled a face. “Alright, fine. You know what  _ my  _ ma said about them.”

 

“I know,” said Steve. The moon was waning, just under half full, but bright enough that Bucky could make out Steve’s profile. 

 

“Sorry for slippin’ out,” he said. “I just- I couldn’t say goodbye like that. With all those people around. And-” he laughed, a little bitter. “Most of our time together was spent sneaking around in the dark. It felt… right.”

 

Steve sat on the dark grass in the shadow of all those orderly stones, and Bucky sat down beside him. 

 

“She was the one good thing in that place, Steve,” said Bucky, his voice low. “It amazed me sometimes, that people that evil could make something as wonderful as her.”

 

“It’s ‘cause they didn’t make her,” said Steve. “She made herself.”

 

He was right. She was his impossible girl, and she could do anything. 

 

He and Steve sat in the cemetery listening to tree frogs sing and crickets hum and red, red leaves rustling overhead.

 

“They told me she died,” he said suddenly, his own voice almost jarring against the soft sounds of the night.  “I pieced it together later, after- the river, you know. They told me she died so I’d stop asking about her. They had to have wiped me three, four times, but then I’d start asking about her again.  _ The girl, with the red hair. Where is my partner?”  _ (He’d promised that he’d remember her. It was a promise he’d kept.)

 

Bucky had lapsed into Russian for that final bit, but Steve seemed to understand.

 

“I get it,” said Steve. “She was my one good thing, too. God, they woke me up from the ice and gave me a crash course on being a person in the twenty-first century, and just- they gave me three months of leave and psychotherapy. Let me alone except for weekly appointments. Didn’t know a soul, barely recognized the city. Spent the whole time listening to the radio, which was just, mother of god. Depressing as hell. And the rest of my time wandering around the city. I drew some things. Took myself to the pictures. 

 

“And then there was New York, and the tesseract. The first time around, you know. And she kind of adopted me, and then SHIELD paired us up. She was my partner for almost ten years. Felt like longer.”

 

“I don’t know how long she was with me,” said Bucky. “But I miss her. I miss us. Not that you aren’t enough- you are, you always have been-”

 

“That why you used to go out and find all those girls?” asked Steve, his eyes gleaming with that shit-eating-smirk the rest of the world never seemed to notice. 

 

“Laugh it up, punk,” said Bucky. “What are the odds that we separately fell in love with the same girl?”

 

“Pretty high, considering,” said Steve. “The real clencher is that she actually wanted us both. That’s what gets me.”

 

“She deserved better than me,” said Bucky eventually. Down in the sparkling city cars had slowed on the roads, and the breeze off the water was cold. “You do too.”

 

“Don’t say that,” said Steve. 

 

“She did.” It wasn’t angry or belligerent. He’d accepted it, and maybe one day Steve would too. 

 

“No, Buck. That’s really the thing. I think that’s love. You spend your whole life trying to make up your own failures to that person, trying to earn them loving you. And the whole time? They’re doing the same thing for you.”

 

Bucky swallowed hard and tucked his head onto the plane of Steve’s shoulder. “You sound pretty sure of that,” he said.

 

Bucky felt Steve’s nod. “I oughtta be,” he said. “I’ve been doing it since 1935.”

  
  


* * *

 

_ The world doesn’t remember. It never does: humanity’s collective memory fails after one generation; it fades when the collective pain is soothed over by time and second chances. Clint has no intention of letting that happen. Not this time.  _

 

“Jesus,” he said, settling into the creaking desk chair. “There’s a reason I always let you do this, Nat.” 

 

He closed out of Lilah’s homework and Cooper’s sea exploration game. It had bothered him once, ignoring Lilah’s nagging for a laptop of her own and the tinkling music of Cooper’s games. Now- god. He wasn’t sure if anything would ever annoy him again. 

 

But it was all- it was all tinged red, debt-red, and she’d turned it so that he was going to carry this balance for the rest of his goddamn life. 

 

It was slow going at first. There was so much he wanted to say, but what this needed (what he had to do) was tell the  _ story. _ There was a narrative, a story as graceful as its namesake, and somehow it was  _ his  _ job to tell it. 

 

“You were always better at this than me,” he muttered again. “Writing everything up. Then again,” he added. “You were better than me at damn near everything.”

 

It took two weeks. Two weeks, a bottle of vodka ( _ schastlivogo puti, Natka _ ) and one late-night email to the most encrypted address on this side of the world. 

 

_ Fury,  _

_ You don’t owe me shit, and you and I both know it. But you owe her.  _

_ She put nearly everything about herself out in the world for the good of everyone, including you. It was the only reason you could get up and running again. She did it because it was the right goddamn thing to do.  _

_ All that information- it didn’t have context. It was names and dates and places. It was black and white.  _

_ Put this up. Make it anonymous, and make it believable.  _

_ Let’s color in the picture.  _

 

Two days later every news site and information source was running the same story. The Black Widow wikipedia page had been changed and locked, the archived SHIELD information leak had been updated, and it was like the information had always been there, just out of sight. 

 

The article Clint liked the most (and the one Laura printed out and saved, pressed inside their wedding album) ran in the New York Times. It started like this: 

 

> _ Natasha Romanov, the Black Widow, was born Natalia Alianovna Romanova. She was born in Russia, and forced through a school that stripped everything from her: her name, her thoughts, and her choices. She was given the same birthday as all of the other members of the Red Room Program. Every January 1st it was announced that they were another year older, like thoroughbred racehorses.  _
> 
> _ Natasha Romanov, the Avenger, was born in Poland when she surrendered herself to SHIELD on April 8, 2002. She renamed herself. She remade herself.  _
> 
> _ For the rest of her life, on every document she had, Natasha Romanoff listed her birthday as the 8th of April. [See the linked  _ _ SHIELD data breach here _ _.] In 2014, when the former Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross planned to selectively thin the earth’s population, Romanoff dumped files of classified information onto the internet. She did it knowing that she was condemning herself. She did it, as far as we can tell, because it was the right thing to do. Her files were listed among tens of thousands of others, entirely without explanation or context.  _
> 
> _ Then, at midnight last night, there was one last data leak. This time it concerned only the Black Widow. This time all it contained was context. _

 

People were always doomed to repeat themselves. The species was always cursed to forget. America had forgotten the Alamo, they’d forgotten the horrors of war, they’d forgotten the pain of carelessness and betrayal. They’d forgotten deprivation, they’d forgotten life before vaccines, they’d lost  _ so much.  _

 

But Clint was not going to let them forget her. It was the last thing he could give her; it was their final shared mission. 

 

Natalia Romanova had been designed to destroy regimes and topple empires. 

 

Natasha Romanov had saved the world. Natasha had saved the world, and every last person on it. 

 

The least they could do was remember her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The structure is fairly different from my other chapters, but I had to fix Endgame. I _had_ to. 
> 
> Next chapter is the final one! It's what I imagine Natasha's heaven would be. (Hint: it involves two super-soldiers.)


	8. Heaven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heaven is a brownstone on a quiet Brooklyn Street. Heaven is the gleam of James' grin in the dark, and anticipation in the air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just FYI: this chapter mentions human trafficking, specifically James and Natasha breaking it up and satisfactorily murdering some folks.

 

> “Fear is an unavoidable element of the mortal condition. Creation in all its ravishing beauty, with its infinite baroque embellishments and subtle charms, with all the wonders that it offers from both the Maker and the made, with all its velvet mystery and with all the joy we receive from those we love here, so enchants us we lack the imagination, less than the faith, to envision an even more dazzling world beyond, and therefore even if we believe, we cling tenaciously to this existence, to sweet familiarity, **fearful that all conceivable paradises will prove wanting by comparison.** ”
> 
> \-- One Door Away From Heaven by Dean Koontz
> 
>  

* * *

 

 

_Heaven was a Brooklyn brownstone on a quiet street._

 

It was filled with moving boxes and honey-gold evening light, with little dust motes dancing in the air like dreams. For a moment Natasha was content to stand in the entryway and absorb the feeling of the house: warmth, potential, history, love.

 

She could hear James and Steve moving around upstairs, boxes and furniture thumping and scraping softly as they unpacked. Nat had been sent out for dinner, and she’d assumed that her men needed an hour to themselves: it had been a long century for both of them, and this- this was something they’d missed. This place, a home to call their own, one they’d picked. Not army barracks, not safe houses that sat dusty and blood-stained, not bland, impersonal rooms in one of SHIELD’s many complexes.

 

This was theirs, as they were each others. Natasha could respect that. She’d known when she’d agreed to date them both (though she still hated the word ‘dating’; she and the soldiers weren’t teenagers, ugh), and then to _move in_ with them both, that this would take understanding and space. She would respect their needs, and hoped (trusted) that they would respect hers in turn.

 

“Food!” she yelled, setting the bags of Thai carryout on the kitchen island.

 

“Hey!” Steve yelled back, happy to hear from her. “Come up here for a sec!”

 

Natasha rolled her eyes but headed towards the stairs anway, trailing her her hand up the dark, scraped wood of the bannister. “You send me out for food and then won’t eat it when it’s warm,” she called, pausing on the landing and listening for them.

 

“In here,” James called from the back bedroom. She’d thought about claiming it for an office: it looked over their tiny back garden, and she’d imagined herself watching snow fall or flowers grow as she looked out the wide, bright window.

 

“What-?”

 

They’d set up a bed, _her_ bed, the arched steel frame that she’d had in the Hell’s Kitchen safe house she’d shown to Steve. A small, low vanity had been installed below the window, and piles of her books had been scattered around, clearly abandoned when the sheer volume of novels had begun to overwhelm her loves. They’d even made the bed, the pillows fluffed and encased in her sheets.

 

James was closest to her, watching her with clear, impassive eyes. She knew from experience that that was how he dealt with nerves. Steve, for his part, was nearly vibrating with all the things he wanted to say.

 

“I…” Her first instinct was to assume they didn’t want her in their bed. Her first instinct had been trained into her by cruel people who had told her she had no place in the world, and her instinct was _wrong._

 

“We thought- we know you need your space sometimes, and it was such a big step for you to agree to move in with us-”

 

James cut off Steve’s nervous jumble of words. “We love you,” he said. “And we know sometimes you need a space to go and be quiet, and not be touched. You’re always welcome in our bed- or in our laps,” he added with a little smile, almost as an afterthought. “But you have another option. You always have another option. We aren’t here to take away your choices.”

 

“I thought- maybe if you left the door open, it would mean we could come in and see you,” said Steve, his fidgeting fingers giving away how important this was to him. “And if you closed it, we’ll be here waiting.”

 

“Okay,” said Natasha around the lump in her throat. “I- okay.”

 

They’d _seen_ her. They’d known how terrifying this was; they knew that sometimes she needed to work through things on her own; they knew how she valued her privacy. They knew all those things and didn’t resent them, didn’t need it explained.

 

_They knew her. They loved her. And she loved them._

 

“I love you,” said Natasha, standing frozen in the doorway, looking from Steve to James to the bed and back again. She didn’t want to say, _I don’t deserve this._ She didn’t want to throw the gift back in their faces.

 

James moved first, tugging Natasha into him. “Love you too, impossible girl,” he murmured.

 

Steve was quick to press himself against her back, warm and reassuring. “Love you both,” he said. “And this place.”

 

“Yes,” said Natasha, nodding into James’ chest. “Home.”

 

* * *

 

_Heaven was the gleam of James’ teeth in the dark, the predatory grin of purpose and triumph and heady, drugging freedom._

 

Both James and Natasha were members of the Avengers; they both took calls from Agent Hill and ran their missions at Steve’s side. When the inevitable media-pieces broke both of them were usually photographed just over his shoulder, the black of their tac-suits fading behind the gleaming red, white, and blue.

 

They were both Avengers, but this? Here? This was where they _thrived._

 

Natasha had been fielding calls from Isaiah for more than a decade now, trusting the lawyer to vet any potential clients and pick the cases where she’d do the most good or where the client most needed her skillset. They were covert ops, all of them: no extraction team, no government sanctions, no eyes or surveillance or check-ins. It was the Black Widow, lurking in the dark, spinning her web, doing what only she could do best.

 

Now, though: here in this world where James was hers again, where James was whole again, he came with her.

 

Every time, even decades later, it was such a thrill to fight at his side.

 

There were some issues that Isaiah knew Natasha would always be interested in. She’d gone after kidnapped children, she’d served legal papers to powerful and abusive men, and she took incredibly pleasure in bringing justice down on the heads of human traffickers.

 

She and James had both had their autonomy, ability to choose, and privacy taken away from them over and over again. That wasn’t going to happen to these women.

 

The Florida air was muggy and thick, and Natasha followed James across the rooftop of the warehouse, smelling the salt of the canal and the funk of ever-present swamplands beyond. They’d been watching the building for most of the day. Four men had been inside, guarding the women they’d already taken, and as night had fallen two more vehicles had pulled in: a sports care and a box truck, with three more men in total.

 

The women were against the back wall of the warehouse, kept in a large, wire-fenced enclosure that reminded Natasha too much of a kennel. Someone had said once that you fought fire with fire: tonight she planned to wipe out some of the red in her ledger with a different shade of crimson entirely. The men who had done this would face a swifter justice than the American court system could deliver.

 

James moved efficiently across the roof, his boots silent on the concrete, and stood over Natasha as she quickly picked the lock that led down into the stairwell. It was dark, and Natasha felt James’ lips brush over hers before they began to creep down the stairs, listening for any sounds rising up from below.

 

As they separated onto the catwalk Natasha could hear men talking below, their voices echoing up into the pipes and rafters.

 

James signalled, caught her attention, and gestured down to the metal packing crates scattered here and there over the open floor of the warehouse.

 

Natasha tapped her gun and holstered it. They couldn’t risk one of their shots ricocheting and hurting one of the women: they’d be doing this the old-fashioned way. Fun. Both of them were old-fashioned anyway; arguably bordering on prehistoric. It wasn’t just their age- justice like theirs, killers like them… it was something out of the ether, the leftovers of the formation of the universe. Destruction and fresh starts over and over again, an eternal cycle.

 

Natasha crept down the eastern catwalk as James took the west, his movements nearly invisible in the gloom of the rafters. They were silent as they ran down their stairs, aware of each other and their enemy below, and as the first man dropped to the sting of Natasha’s bites she felt the cold, familiar clarity of a fight settle over her.

 

Natasha had been many things: a spy, spinning her web. An assassin, silent death in the dark. She’d acted as a soldier, following her leader into battle (an unmistakable blur of red, white, and resolute). But this: the reaper was her favorite of her many roles.

 

_Not_ killing- pulling her punches, blocking airways until unconsciousness but not death slowed their pulse, using bites instead of bullets- it was so much more difficult. She had to be _on,_ had to calculate her own force as well as track her allies and opponents and their resources. It was doable, but this? This was better. This was the predatory clarity of sharks, the cold bite of the tundra,  the linear joy of kill or be killed.

 

Somewhere to Natasha’s left a skull crunched as James did what he did best. It had been less than a minute since they’d come down the stairs, and she was moving towards the remaining slavers before her latest opponent’s body had hit the floor.

 

These three were armed, and one got off a few shots as Natasha ducked behind one end of a steel shipping crate. The bullets, as predicted, pinged and ricocheted before finding a home in softer hosts.

 

James rolled and joined her, back to the metal, his fingers dripping red.

 

“The hell did you do, _milli moi_?” she asked, checking her gauntlets.

 

“Eyes,” said James, wiping his hands on the black canvas of his pants.

 

“What are we going to do about these bozos?” asked Natasha, peeking over the top of the crate to catch movement and then duck before another round of automatic fire whizzed by her. Someone distant cried out, high and sharp, and James’ face darkened: as predicted, it was always the innocent who got caught in the crossfire.

 

James turned, put his hands flat on the crate, and raised an eyebrow at Natasha like, _Well? Are you going to help?_

 

Natasha grinned at him, her blood thrumming with adrenaline and the joy of James’ presence, and then they were shoving _hard_ at the crate, forcing it backwards at speed , boots digging into the concrete floor.

 

The two men who had been sheltering behind the crate shouted in surprise but didn’t react quickly enough: they were pinned between the cinderblock wall and the crate, and to Natasha’s surprise James didn’t let up. His jaw tightened and his breath huffed out through clenched teeth and he _shoved,_ muscles bunching like a draft horse, and distantly Natasha could hear the slow crunch of bone giving as it accepted its fate: terminally caught between a rock and a hard place.

 

“Feel better?” Natasha asked, one eyebrow raised.

 

“Much,” said James, standing.

 

“I’ll kill them!” someone yelled from the other end of the warehouse.

 

The final trafficker was standing against the chainlink of the kennel-like cell fencing, his gun through the links and pointed at the women, who were huddled together.

 

“You won’t,” said Natasha cooly, walking slowly towards the short, shaking man.

 

“Yeah?” he jammed his gun harder against the fence, making it rattle and shake.

 

“Yeah,” said Natasha, watching as her prey’s eyes tracked her and then flitted fitfully to the side, then back to her. _James._ He was up to something, as always. “You aren’t going to hurt those women, because you already know the truth: you’re going to die here either way. No need to make it worse.”

 

She could see the thoughts flickering over the slaver’s face: _If I die, what difference does it make?_

 

_Fool,_ Natasha thought. _How does he not know that there truly are things worse than death? Me, for a start. Death is merciful. Tonight, I am not._

 

“Don’t come closer!” he yelled, his voice screeching up half an octave.

 

Natasha stopped moving. She was in range for her bites now, but couldn’t risk it. Not yet. If she shocked him his muscles would tense and he could end up shooting the women out of reflex.

 

“How do you think you’re going to get out of this, _golova der'ma_?” she asked, tone reasonable.

 

He didn’t answer, just rattled the gun again with his eyes wild.

 

The whole time Natasha had been talking with the trafficker she’d been watching the women in the cell. One had been sneaking along the edge, her eyes flicking from Natasha to the barrel of the gun and back again. The stock of the gun wouldn’t fit through the links in the chain fence, but if she forced the barrel away from the women…

 

She did. The dark-haired woman lunged for the gun, both palms hitting the barrel and forcing it to swing down and into the opposite corner of the cell. In surprise the slaver turned away from Natasha, and she took that moment to hit him with her bites. Two, then four sparking disks hit him, and if his heart stopped- well, it would be a more peaceful death than he deserved. The gun went off, bullets digging into the floor, and then fell from slack hands.

 

James stepped out of she shadows behind the twitching trafficker. “I fear you don’t need me around anymore,” he said, tone cheerful. As he moved to the cell door he kicked the now-still body.

 

The woman who had blocked the gun was watching James with suspicion, both hands tucked into her armpits. Gun barrels grew incredibly hot with use, and probably she had minor burns that needed tending.

 

James reached out with his black and gold hand, grabbed the heavy chain and lock that held the chain link gate closed, and tore them away easily, the metal screeching as he did.

 

All the women watched him warily and took a collective step back.

 

“James,” said Natasha evenly.

 

He looked at her over his shoulder before nodding and moving past her, all the way to the other end of the warehouse where the huge doors still stood open.

 

“You’re free now,” said Natasha, first in English and then again in Spanish. They were in Florida, and probably at least a few of these women had been promised a better life in America. The powerful would always prey on those in need (and as long as Natasha was around, there would be someone to help stop it.)

 

“I’d like to help you,” Natasha continued. She’d already looked into options for the survivors (it was never a good idea to go into a fight thinking you’d lose. If you didn’t have hope, you were already lost). “There’s a safe place for women, all women, about an hour from here. They can give you a place to stay, or help you find your family, or provide lawyers.”

 

“Why?” asked the women who’d saved the others. She looked like she was in her early twenties, with long dark hair and narrowed, wary eyes.

 

“What’s your name? I’m Natasha,” she asked.

 

“Maria,” said the woman, her eyebrows rising a little. “I’ve heard about you on the news, after you exposed government data”

 

Natasha shrugged. “Then you know that I haven’t always had choices. I’d like to give one to you.”

 

“How will you get us there?” asked another woman.

 

“James is working on that,” said Natasha, confident in the way her man thought.

 

“Summer will drive,” said Maria, gesturing to a woman about her age. Summer currently had both arms wrapped around a girl who couldn’t be older than fourteen. “You can navigate from the passenger seat.

 

_Maria, you’ll go so far,_ Natasha thought. “Good,” she said with a smile. “Now all we need to do is wait for our ride.”

 

It didn’t take long. A fifteen passenger van wheeled in, the headlights flashing, and James slid out.

 

“Don’t put it park,” he cautioned as Natasha and the women approached the old Ford. “I couldn’t find the keys.”

 

“You coming with us?” Natasha asked, keeping her expression serene as the ten women crawled up into the van, shooting cautious looks at her and James all the while.

 

“Nah,” said James. “Gotta go back for our wheels. I’ll pick you up at Hope House.”

 

“Alright,” said Natasha, smiling a little when James leaned over to kiss her cheek. “But wash your hands first. I don’t need bloody prints all over my ‘vette.”

 

“I told you we should’ve taken the truck!” James called as Natasha walked towards the Ford.

 

All the women were in the van now, and more than a few faces were peering out of the windshield at Natasha. The passenger seat had been left empty, so she climbed into the vehicle, slammed the door, and told Summer to turn left out of the warehouse lot.

 

“You’re with him?” one of the women asked from the middle seat, watching as James waved them off.

 

“Yes,” said Natasha. James had had long sleeves on tonight, and considering how much blood he’d gotten on his hands, it wasn’t  likely that anyone had guessed his identity. James had been officially pardoned by the United Nations in a small, no-press ceremony. He was, according to the paperwork, the longest-serving prisoner of war ever.

 

According to Natasha, James, and Steve, he was finally free.

 

“I’ve been with him for a long, long time,” Natasha added. “I trust him.”

 

“The couple that… murders bad guys together stays together?” one of them women asked hesitantly. There was a long, breathless pause, and then they were all laughing: the too-loud, slightly manic laughter of people who had to laugh or cry. And if they cried, there was a chance they’d never stop.

 

“I’ll tell him that,” said Natasha when she could breathe again. “He’ll get a kick out of it.”

 

“Why did you help us?” another asked. “How did you know where to find us?”

 

Natasha thought about how much to reveal. “I have… friends,” she said. _Informants._ “And allies. And if they find a situation they can’t handle, or want me to check out, they let me know. If I can make it there, I come.”

 

( _And if they’re assholes, I make sure they can afford me_ , she thought to herself. A girl had to work to keep an apartment to herself in Manhattan.)

 

“I want to do that,” said the youngest of the bunch.

 

Natasha turned in her seat and met the girl’s eyes. “One day, _smelaya devushka_ , you will,” she said.

 

It was an hour to Hope House. The night was dark, and the air conditioning in the van only rattled half-heartedly, unwilling to cool the space below sweltering. Still: they were whole, and they were free, and they would remain that way. It was a night to be savored.

 

“This house, the yellow one,” said Natasha, and the van bumped into the little parking lot beside the building. Her black corvette was already in the back corner of the lot, the weak moonlight glinting off the paint.

 

“There’s a pink light by the door,” said Maria.

 

“It’s always on,” said Natasha, piling out of the van along with everyone else. “They’ll help you. Good luck, ladies.”

 

“You aren’t coming inside?” asked Summer, turning to look at Natasha.

 

Nat shrugged. “What I do- it only works if people don’t recognize me or ask too many questions.”

 

Summer nodded, looking thoughtful. “Should we mention you when they ask what happened?”

 

Natasha pulled the woman in for a hug. “Up to you,” she said, and then all the women were hugging her, one by one.

 

“Thank you,” said Maria.

 

Her eyes flicked to James as he walked out of the dark, a plastic grocery bag in one hand. “It’s the wallets and cell phones of the men who took you,” he said, passing the bag over. “The authorities might want this. These men had connections in other places.”

 

“Other women,” said Maria, looking grim. “Thank you- both of you. I won’t forget you,” she said, and then she turned and followed the rest of the women up to the glow of the stubborn pink light, and through the door.

 

James slung his arm around Natasha’s shoulders. “I won’t forget you either, ‘Tashenka,” he told her, pressing a light kiss to the top of her head. “You do good work.”

 

“We do good work,” she said, leaning her weight into his. “Now let’s go home. Steve’ll miss us.”

 

“Think he’s gotten into trouble without us?” James asked, sliding behind the wheel. (They’d had a deal: she could drive to, he could drive from. Both liked the thousand miles of highway that rolled from Florida to New York.)

 

“It’s been two whole days,” said Natasha, buckling herself in.

 

“One time I left him alone for two days and he managed to piss off an undead, serum-drunk nazi and suicide a plane into the arctic,” said James, keeping the car to the speed limit as they rolled through a residential neighborhood.

 

“One time I left Steve on his own for- gosh, I don’t know, an hour? And he pissed off the king of a foreign nation, broke an international treaty, got arrested, and ended up flying off to Siberia,” said Natasha.

 

They were on the highway now, the engine rumbling beneath them. “Shit,” said James, grinning over at her. “How long did it take you to get us down here?”

 

“Fifteen hours,” said Natasha, her smirk widening as the trees began to blur by outside.

 

“Bet I can do it in thirteen,” said James, and the car leapt forward.

 

“It’s for Steve’s own good,” said Natasha, reaching over to trail one hand up the inside of James’ thigh.

 

“Yeah,” said James, his voice suddenly thick. “Steve.”

 

Natasha laughed again, a silvery tone unfurling in the air behind them. They made it from Florida to Brooklyn in just under thirteen hours, and Steve had managed not to get into any trouble at all.

 

(That is, until James and Natasha had him sprawled out on their bed beneath them- but that was the kind of trouble and madness all of them welcomed.)

 

* * *

 

_Heaven was shivering anticipation on her skin and sex in the air._

 

Natasha woke up slowly, gradually,  which was a luxury all its own. The inside of her eyelids were red, and that meant the sun was up. She was slightly too warm, pinned beneath the sheets and cover, but that wasn’t what had woken her: she could hear kissing and shuddering little gasps: her boys were awake and playing without her.

 

For a moment or two Natasha was content to lay perfectly still, feeling the sun on her face and the slow rocking of the mattress as someone worked their hips in time. It was like being… adrift, afloat on a sea of contentment, blown whichever way the winds chose.

 

Someone huffed- _James-_ and Steve shushed him, laughter in his voice.

 

“Too late,” said Natasha, still not moving, her voice low and sleep-heavy.

 

“Sorry,” said Steve, not sounding sorry at all.

 

Natasha thrashed her way free of the sheets (they’d pinned her down in them, the bastards) and rolled to watch. Steve was braced over James, his mouth worrying James’ nipples as his fingers, gleaming with lube, worked their way into James’ ass.

 

“You can’t have thought I’d sleep through this,” said Natasha, propping herself up on one elbow to watch. She’d meant the comment to come out dry, but it sounded more breathless than anything.

 

“Yeah,” said James, worrying his flushed-red lips, “Don’t think that was his intention.”

 

Natasha could see that Steve had three fingers inside James, now, slowly wriggling them, and she knew from experience how overwhelming and delicious it was. “I think he really took that comment to heart last night.”

 

“What comment?” asked Steve, all innocence, raising his head off James’ chest and working his fingers from James’ body.

 

“The one I made about how we _must_ be showing our age if we’re too tired for sex on a Friday night,” said Natasha, shifting to rub her thighs together as she watched Steve stroll naked around the bed to the top drawer of his dresser.

 

“Hey!” said James.

 

Natasha laughed. “Well, if he isn’t going to take advantage…” she purred, sliding across the bed and curling against James’ side, taking his cock in her mouth. She knew she couldn’t finish him- Steve obviously had plans- but she could take the edge off, and enjoy herself along the way.

 

He was heavy and hot in her mouth, and she swirled her tongue over the dorsal vein of his cock, imagining that she could practically feel the blood thrumming inside him. “‘Tasha,” he groaned, running his hand over her hip and down between her legs. She opened for him, enjoying the feeling of his fingers running lightly through her folds, gathering the wetness beginning to pool inside her and spreading it up to her clit, hard and needy.

 

When Steve walked back to the bed with something glinting in his hand she closed her eyes and hollowed her cheeks and bobbed her head, content to watch whatever game Steve was going to play.

 

“Bucky,” said Steve softly, and James pulled his hand away, palming her ass and holding her open for Steve.

 

“Oh,” she said, her surprised muffled by James’ cock.

 

He must have felt it, because he chuckled and gently thrust up into her mouth. “Good, sweetheart?” he asked, and Natasha returned to her task, working her fist and throat in time, slowly and luxuriously taking James into her mouth and letting him slip back out over spit-slick lips.

 

“Yeah, I know it’s good,” said James, his fingers tightening on Natasha’s ass she swallowed around him, the muscles in her throat determinedly working. Nat shuddered when she felt cold lube hit her exposed ass, and then Steve’s warm finger began working it inside her, prepping her much in the same way as he’d prepped James- that reminded her…

 

She shifted, up on her knees properly so that Steve could work into her ass, so her mouth and fist could pleasure James, and so that her other fingers could keep him open, slip inside him. He was hot around her fingers, the room was filled with his little gasps and the twitching of his hips, and Natasha’s body was narrowing to the _pleasurepainstretch_ of Steve’s big fingers inside her.

 

“Nat- Natasha,” James gasped as she rolled her fingers inside of him.

 

She forgot about James as Steve slid his fingers out and began working the cold, heavy steel of the plug inside her body.

 

“Gonna open you up,” he said. “Then have you ride Buck’s face while I fuck him, yeah? And the whole time you’ll feel this in you, heavy and warm, making everything more intense, knowing it’s there. I’ll fuck him into a mess, look at him, he’s halfway there already, all fucked out and sappy with it.”

 

Natasha was pushing back into Steve now, fucking herself on the plug, and frantically bobbing her head, her world narrowed to the salty-bitter cock in her mouth and the steel in her ass and the men in her bed, in her life, oh how she loved them.

 

“Then we’ll clean up, take turns scrubbing you down just so we can mess you all up again, right sweetheart? James in your ass maybe, and me in your cunt, stretched out between us, right where you want to be, yeah?”

 

“Steve- Stevie, c’mon-”

 

That was James, feeling just as wrecked as Natasha was; how come Steve wasn’t fucking anyone, why was he _doing_ this to them, huh? It was like all those years of celibacy were taking their revenge now; every dirty thought Steve had ever had was trying to escape from his mouth at once, a litany of filth, a credo of carnal intention that Natasha could weep for.

 

Finally Steve let the plug slide home inside her, heavy and warm, and he gave her a smack on the ass that had Natasha yelping and choking on James’ cock, now drooling precome over her tongue.

 

“Thank you for keeping him open for me,” said Steve sincerely, gripping Natasha’s wrist and sliding her out of James’ warm wet heat. “Don’t you want to sit on his face? I know he loves it; I used to think he’d die happy sprawled out between some girl’s legs.”

 

“Want you ‘Tasha, c’mon,” said James, wrapping her sleep-tangled hair around his hand and tugging her down for a kiss. “C’mon, honey, one leg over.”

 

Natasha had been ignoring her cunt for the weight of the plug in her ass and Bucky’s cock in her mouth, but now she was already shivering, so aroused it bordered on pain.

 

James turned her so she was facing Steve, could watch as he slid a condom over his blood-flushed cock and began to work himself inside James. His fingers tightened on her hips, near to bruising, and when Steve was fully seated inside him James tugged her hips back and over his chin, unerringly finding her clit with his lips.

 

“Oh, oh James,” she said, bracing her hands on his chest to balance herself, her thighs already trembling around his ears. He’d always been able to do this to her; reduce her to a quivering mess in seconds, but this? With Steve, and his mouth and his blue eyes so hot on her? Natasha was so hot for this that she almost felt like she was watching herself from a distance, absolutely lost in the sensations they were pulling from her.

 

“Yeah, look at you,” said Steve, starting a rocking rhythm at the edge of the bed where he stood between James’ legs.

 

It occurred to Natasha that she’d woken up right into an orgy, and she hadn’t even been kissed by Steve yet. “C’mere,” she told him, reaching out with a grasping hand. “Kiss me.”

 

“Bossy,” he said fondly, leaning forward and grinding himself into James and he kissed her. James shuddered under her like a racehorse straining towards the start, his skin rippling with stimulation.

 

When Steve pulled away, working into James faster, with just enough force to rock Natasha against James’ mouth, she started toying with his nipples (nearly as sensitive as her own), desperate for an activity that would distract her from James’ mouth on her. It was all wet heat and exquisite pressure; she didn’t know what he was doing, but she knew how she felt: like her skin was too tight, like all the nerves in her body had be rewired to her clit, like she couldn’t get enough air but didn’t care because the muscles in her stomach were jumping, tightening, and -

 

-and the muscle in Steve’s jaw was twitching as he wrapped his hand around James’ cock and stroked it, hard and sure, matching it to the beat of his hips into James’ ass, and it was Natasha who broke first, pleasure sapping the strength from her muscles and sending colored lights ricocheting across the inside of her eyelids.

 

James finished next, or maybe it was Steve- either way he groaned into the wet mess of her cunt and then came over Steve’s fist, a little splash of sticky come splattering over the hand she had braced on his chest.

 

“Holy Mary mother of god,” Steve muttered, braced over James with his hands on either side of the other man’s hips.

 

Natasha let herself fall to the side so she didn’t smother James in truth, and then they all lay where they’d fallen, panting and wrung out and sticky and _alive._ Alive and in love in their bed, in the home they’d chosen for themselves.

 

“Alright Steve,” Natasha panted. “We’re not old. Definitely not. Hundred years young, that’s you.”

 

He reached over James’ sticky belly and halfheartedly smacked at her. “This is not about that.”

 

“Yeah?” said Natasha, wriggling a little, beginning to get her second wind.

 

“Excuse me,” said James, looking up at the ceiling. “But I’m covered in come, and unless you want it all over you, we should clean up.”

 

Natasha sat up and drank in the sex-soaked glory that was James right now. He was sprawled in the sunlight, which caught on the spatters of his own come on his chest, Natasha’s slick on his chin, and Steve’s contribution beginning to leak down his thighs.

 

“Oh, baby,” said Natasha, leaning over to kiss his fuck-swollen lips gently. “What’d we do to you.”

 

He grinned up at her, pale eyes crinkling. “My favorite thing, sweet cheeks.”

 

Steve groaned and shoved himself up and off the bed before taking James’ hand and helping him up as well.

 

Natasha sighed, loving how they looked together (she always did). They were perfect, and kind, and _hers,_ and when Steve ducked his head and slanted his lips over James’ she hummed to herself, suddenly not caring that she had slick drying tacky and sticky on her thighs.

 

“You’re so pretty,” she said, watching James cradle Steve’s face, pressing himself flush against the other man. “Both of you.”

 

“Not half-bad yourself,” said James, leaning away and reaching for her hand.

 

She took it and let herself be towed along to the bathroom.

 

They’d fixed up most of the house as they’d gone: painting cabinets, rehanging doors, laying flooring and patching drywall. The master bathroom was the exception: they’d had it professionally remodeled, absorbing the closet from the smallest bedroom into the square footage and installing a tile-lined shower that could fit all three of them and came complete with multiple shower heads and wall jets.

 

Their shower, even if they went in alone, was an _experience._

 

Natasha tied up her hair as James and Steve scrubbed themselves off under the spray. It took them thirty seconds, soldier-effient, yet both seemed content to linger as she stepped into the water to join them.

 

“Hi,” said Steve, reeling her to him and pressing a kiss to her brow.

 

James’ soap-slick hands crept between them, up Natasha’s belly to her breasts, sudsing as he went.

 

“Hey yourself,” said Natasha, leaning back into James and offering her face for more kisses. She wasn’t disappointed.

 

Her soldiers were thorough, and turned washing into a game. They passed her back and forth, rubbing their hands all over her, back and forth and around and around until Natasha was nearly dizzy with it. James had knelt to take her nipples into his mouth, and his fingers toyed with her clit while Steve smugly tugged at the plug in her ass and sucked open-mouthed kisses into her skin as the air went foggy and thick around them.

 

“Need you,” Natasha mumbled as James turned her towards Steve with his hands on her hips. Steve picked her up and her legs wrapped around his (bizarrely tiny) waist automatically. If she arched she could rub her cunt against the washboard planes of his stomach, she was need incarnate, hot and wet all over, the heavy humid air of the bathroom only making her dizzier, out of her mind in the best possible way.

 

“Greedy thing,” said Steve, carrying her out of the shower as James cut the water.

 

“Yes, please, for you,” said Natasha, levering herself against him to see if she could sneak his cock inside her. “C’mon, Steve, c’mon.”

 

He paused by the towels, still holding her to him.

 

“No, no, I’m wet, it’s okay.”

 

“The sheets…”

 

“Gonna have to change ‘em anyway,” said James, pressing himself against Steve’s side and cupping the back of Natasha’s head. “Let’s take care of our girl, yeah?”

 

“Yes,” said Natasha, chanting it to herself as Steve carried them back to the rumpled bed. “Yes, please, love you two so much”

 

“Hmm,” said Steve, laying her out on the bed and standing between her knees, one indolent thumb rubbing back and forth across the apex of her pussy. “Love you too, just like this, all laid out and desperate for us. It’s something just for us; just me and Bucky see you like this, needy and wanting.”

 

“Beautiful, impossible girl,” said James, stretching out in his side beside her, toying with her drawn-tight nipples. She was sensitive, all needy and flushed, and Natasha arched against him, seeking _more:_ more of their mouths on her, more soft and arousing touches, more of Steve’s filthy mouth, more of them loving her.

 

“Bucky told me you wanted this,” said Steve conversationally, digging in the trashed sheets for the little bottle of lube he’d been using before. “You went out on that job to where- Venice? He fucked me and talked all through it.”

 

Steve poured a few drops of lube over his fingers, tossed the bottle to James, and slid his slicked fingers through her folds: between the lube and her own arousal it was nearly fictionless; an arousing and entirely unsatisfying slide right where felt aflame; too hot to be a living girl anymore. Maybe she’d become a phoenix in truth, reborn in flames out of her love for these men, her hope for the world, her stubborn belief that life was worth living and things would get better. (She was the Black Widow and _nothing_ would take that from her. She was the Black Widow, and nothing would take these men, either.)

 

“You okay?” Steve asked softly, bending over her and making eye contact.

 

“Hmm,” she hummed, smiling serenely. “I’m wonderful, Steve. Love you.”

 

He grinned at her, all white teeth and crinkling blue eyes. “Love you too. Bucky was right: you do get all sweet like this.”

 

“I said pliable,” said James, pressing a kiss to her shoulder as Steve wrapped her arms around her neck and picked her up again. This time, though, he slowly lowered down on his cock, sliding home tight inside her.

 

Natasha shuddered and lowered her forehead to his shoulder.

 

“Good?” James asked, the metal of his vibranium hand a welcome contrast to the sizzling of her skin.

 

“Perfect,” Natasha said, pressing her lips to Steve’s skin. He tasted like water and slightly salty-clean skin, and she loved him, loved this, suspended between them on a taut wire of arousal.

 

Steve stood still and held her, stroking up and down her back, as James carefully worked the plug out of her. “Shepherd of Judah,” he mumbled to himself as the plug slid free, and that made Natasha giggle (jesus, they’d reduced her to giggling) into the skin of Steve’s neck. He seemed to like it; he cupped the back of her head and chuckled.

 

She heard the bottle of lube snap open and then James was working even more into her; Jesus, how long did they think they were going to fuck her? Maybe longer than she expected, just keep her like this forever, between the two of them, safe and warm and loved, yeah, she could do that. She could be good for that, take whatever they gave her.

 

“Ready?” asked James eventually, and he sounded as strained as Natasha was.

 

“Yes, yes- _oh.”_

 

Steve widened his legs, bracing himself open, and crooned to her as James worked his way into her, an inch at a time, until they were both pressed against her, bookending her in affection and safety and warmth. “Buck,” said Steve, sounding half-strangled, his voice rasping. “Shit, Buck, I can feel you in her.”

 

“Can feel you too,” said James, and he already sounded sex-drunk, his hands tight on Natasha’s hips.

 

Natasha let her forehead roll against Steve- it was too much and not enough, she was so _full,_ full of them and love for them. She hadn’t known it could be like this, hadn’t known her _life_ could be like this.

 

Steve rocked into her experimentally, a gentle slide half out and back in, which left all three of them gasping.

 

“Son of a bitch,” James muttered, pressing into her himself, his movements almost tentative. “Natasha, tsarina, can I see your face? Wanna see your pretty face, wanna make sure you’re okay.”

 

Natasha leaned back, resting the back of her head on James’ shoulder, a move that only pressed her clit more firmly against Steve’s pubic bone.  She whimpered through a smile so sex-drunk and wide that she didn’t feel quite like herself.

 

James kissed her, laughing in the back of his throat, so low it could almost be mistaken for a purr. “Oh yeah, you’re okay aren’t you honey? You’re better ‘n okay.”

 

“She’s perfect,” said Steve, shifting again, catching her between her shoulder blades with one broad hand to help support her weight. All Natasha had to do was take it; to revel in pure sensation. Steve slipped out of her as James pushed in, her body offering less resistance each time, and then she could feel the drag of herself around James as he slid back out and Steve thrust in, she was the soul and center of a beautiful two-stroke engine, going nowhere but higher, further into the stratosphere that had become her arousal.

 

“Just look at you,” rasped Steve, leaning forward to press a quick kiss against her parted, panting lips. “Look at you, just like this, spread out and open for us, so full of us- Christ, Tasha.”

 

“Love you,” she whispered, trying to put all of her feelings into those two small words. “Love you, love you.”

 

“Yeah,” said James, slightly breathless but nonetheless amused. “Told you being in the middle was the best, told you you’d love it.” One of his hands reached around her hip to find her clit, slippery and so sensitive that having his fingers on it was very nearly painful but she needed them, needed their hands on her, needed to come or she might die of this, might-

 

For a moment, when orgasm came for her, time stopped.

 

So that was why the French called it a little death: she was nothing and everything, flushed with primordial energy, every synapse and nerve of her body sparking between her lovers like a fresh new star: born out of pressure and chemistry and yeah, a little bit of luck and a whole lot of love.

 

“Tasha, sweetheart-” James was next, his dark head pressed to hers, and Natasha was so sensitive and overstimulated and strung out the she almost couldn’t take this, she thought she might be crying but she wasn’t sure she wanted this to stop-

 

James shivered, full-body, and slid out of her gently, his hands still on her, holding her up.

 

When Natasha blearily opened her eyes, Steve’s were on hers, his irises nearly subsumed by the wide black pools of his pupils. “There you are,” he said softly, smiling at her, and Natasha managed a wobbly smile in return.

 

“Your turn,” she said, and jesus, she sounded like she’d been deep-throating the two of them all morning.

 

“Alright baby, yeah, okay,” Steve muttered, walking to the bed and laying her down, his cock still inside her. “You’ve been so perfect for us, took everything, yeah?”

 

Natasha nodded at Steve and he lowered his head to the mattress by her throat and worked into her strongly, his infinite patience run dry, and within seconds he was shuddering against her, his big frame hot and damp and heavy on hers.

 

For a while, an endless series of hot, satisfied moments unspooling into the future, no one said anything. Natasha wasn’t sure what she’d say even if she could figure out how to speak again: for all that they’d been together before, this had felt different: incredibly intimate, terrifying and wonderful, rewarding and too much.

 

“I love you both,” James croaked from the foot of the bed. “But if you ever want to do that again, we need to stock the room with water and pizza beforehand, okay?”

 

“Fair,” said Steve, still face down in the mattress with Natasha doodling little designs into the sweaty skin of his back.

 

Eventually he pushed up to look at her, his brows furrowed and eyes worried. “Talk to us, sweetheart,” he said. “You okay?”

 

“‘M perfect,” said Natasha, slowly stretching her arms up over her head and listening to her spine pop. “Don’t think I’m up to walking just yet. Might not ever walk again, to be honest.”

 

She felt like she’d been hit by the most delicious, solicitous truck on the planet, and she delivered the news of her possible sex-induced maiming with a contented, slightly-drunk smile.

 

“Yeah, we got you,” said James, sliding her across the wet sheets towards him. “We’ll take care of you.”

 

“I know,” said Natasha, closing her eyes again. _“_ I trust you.”

 

* * *

 

_Heaven, in the end, was home._

 

Natasha had lived in uncountable places over the years. With the Red Room, and then the KGB, home had been something other people had; home was for those with tangible places in the world. Natasha was death, and death didn’t need a home, because death was _everywhere:_ death was in every beat of a heart, every cell of fading flowers, in the expansion of the universe and the deep, cold drift of the sea. Death was everywhere and so it was nowhere, just like _NatataliaNatashaWidow_ , girl without name or place or end.

 

After, when Natasha had chosen her name and made a place for herself with SHIELD, ‘home’ was a line on paperwork. It was an address, a place to send her mail, a physical point on the map that could supposedly be tied to her in some abstract way. She spent most of those years sleeping here and there, bouncing from safehouse to safehouse like a feral cat. (Some habits were harder to break than others.) She’d found Isaiah in that time, and his address had become hers. He’d let her know if something was amiss, and then she’d been free again, homeless and in the wind like dandelion down, never sure where she’d land long enough to put down roots.

 

Then, all at once, home became synonymous with family. It wasn’t a place, it was a feeling, a sudden sense of _belonging, fitting, rightness_ that hooked into Natasha somewhere behind her navel and kept reeling her back, back to New York and Tony and Thor and Bruce and Steve and Clint. She wanted them safe, and they wanted _her_ safe. They knew her and they loved her anyway, accepting her into the fold easily, as though the space had always been there waiting for her to fill it.

 

And now… and now she had James and Steve, Steve and James, the only men she’d loved and trusted with everything, with all of her, and they’d given themselves back to her in return.

 

“Penny for them?” asked James, stepping silently into the dawn-grey gloom of their downstairs room. Natasha was curled in the window seat watching as hurrying people strode to work and the occasional taxi drifted by like ships on the horizon.

 

Natasha turned to smile at him, a cozy scrunching of her eyes, and James came to sit across from her, his back to the opposite wall and hips canted to keep his feet on the floor.

 

“I was thinking about home,” said Natasha, keeping her voice low in case Steve was still asleep. “Which sounds stupid,” she added, hearing it out loud.

 

James tugged her feet into his lap, running his thumbs up and down the arches and over the soft wool of her socks. “Not stupid,” he said. “You and Steve, you’re home for me. This place is home.”

 

“It is,” Natasha agreed, letting her head tilt back to rest against the plaster of the wall, her eyes closed. “I’ve never really had a home before. You know how it was. This place… it felt silly to be so attached. It’s a building, a roof and walls, but it’s… right. It’s ours.”

 

“Just us here, sweetheart. Me and you and Steve. No titles, no tragic pasts.”

 

It was a rule they’d agreed on in the darkness of their first night in the Brownstone. This place was for _them._

 

“I didn’t realize it until we came home last night,” she said, enjoying having James’ hands on her. (She always wanted their hands on her; it was like all those lonely, cold years were extracting their payment now, tolls paid in hand-holding and gentle caresses.) “We walked in, and it smelled… right. And I didn’t notice until we’d been gone for a few days. The house smells like home, and our sheets smell like us, and I have a favorite mug. It’s ridiculous.”

 

Natasha could feel that her brow was furrowed, puzzled by the strange human habit of creating emotional bonds with everyday kitchenware.

 

“I see that crooked line of hardwood in the breakfast nook, where you and Steve wouldn’t stop arguing about how to start the flooring, and it makes me smile,” she said. “I even love that stupid dent in the hallway drywall where we ran the bed frame into the wall.”

 

James leaned forward and pulled Natasha to him by her hips, guiding her limbs so that she was sitting in his lap and slumped against him, her legs and arms around him and her face pressed against his throat. When Steve slid into Natasha’s abandoned spot she wasn’t surprised; he’d always had an instinct for this, for being where he was needed.

 

Steve’s hand stroked up and down her side, slow and soothing, and when he spoke his voice was low. “You remember that night in Wakanda?” he asked.

 

“I will never, ever forget it,” she replied, her voice dry. “The two of you making out over my head; James’ cock in your mouth.”

 

Steve pinched her hip, making Natasha wriggle against James, and then said, “We told each other truths that night. I talked about joining up, James stayed in Wakanda, and you- what did you tell us, ‘Tasha?”

 

“That I wanted to be a person.”

 

James’ hand tangled in her hair, and Steve’s hand splayed over her ribs, heavy and warm.

 

“Wanna know who sleeps best in their own bed, and who knows what their home smells like, and has a regular spot in their chair, and uses the same mug just because they like it?” Steve asked. (Steve was always so brave.)

 

“A person, Natashenka,” said James, his voice rumbling in his chest.

 

Briefly, for the smallest piece of a second, Natasha thought about faith. Steve and James, they had faith in spades: in each other, in things working out out alright in the end, in _her._ Maybe they had so much faith that they could will something into being; could warp the reality of the world around their faith to fit it, to make it something right. Something better.

 

They thought she was a person- and maybe, here in her home with the men that she loved… she was.

 

“I love you,” said Natasha, pressing up to kiss first James and then Steve. It was brighter now, dawn beginning to illuminate the street outside, and her lovers’ eyes gleamed blue in the half-dark. “You’re home. You’re my family.”

 

_You are my family,_ thought Natasha, taking in a long, slow breath. _And not even death can take that from me._

 

“Damn straight,” said James, as Steve cupped Natasha’s face and turned her to him. “Welcome home, sweetheart,” he said, eyes crinkling in a smile as he pressed his lips to hers. “ _Welcome home.”_

## The End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I even surprised myself at the level of filth in this chapter.)
> 
> Thank you for reading along on this journey of mine! If you've read any of my other works you've probably already seen this, but it's worth saying again: I think that in so many ways, people make art in an effort to say, "Here, this is how I see the world. This is how the world could be. Does anyone else see this? Am I not alone?" I kind of believe that in its purest form art is something that is meant to be shared, and I'd like to thank all of you for sharing this journey with me. <3 
> 
> If you'd ever like to discuss writing, Marvel, Star Wars, or Outlander, feel free to come yell with me on twitter! I'm @caseydoesfandom. I'm always looking for new fandom pals.
> 
> Thank you to all who have read and commented along on this story! Your enthusiasm for Steve and Natasha and James really meant (and continues to mean) so much to me.


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